Chapter Title: Playtime

A/N: Wow. SO. This took, what, four months to get typed out? I think various delays can be attributed to: college, muses dying, muses going on strike, and my indecisiveness on how this chapter should end. However, today, it came to me. And I set myself to completing this chapter. So, Gogo, I hope you're happy. And now Roxas has to be Dr. Cid's friend. Or else. /lame rp joke

"What are you doing?" Axel asked, his eyes glossing over, feet resting on the short coffee table in front of the loveseat.

From the light, she looked like an angel, her imaginary halo glistening around red flashes of jewelry and dress, red enough like the walls, and Axel's hair. Her shoes were a white speck on the floor, with his black slacks and accentuating white pin-stripes.

She smiled, air around her and Axel charged, and she kicked the coffee table out of the way, into the wall. Larxene had never believed in barriers, and she was uncompromisingly physical. Axel's mind reacted faster than his body, and she was pressed against him.

Knees against knees, and legs spread almost uncomfortably apart, and Larxene's nails digging into the couch and into his shirt. She looked elated, and he couldn't force himself to react beyond the typical knee-jerk reaction. And when Larxene kissed, she loved to leave lips bloody and bruised. Just so she could play nurse and lick away the wounds.

There was no feeling in the action. This was something that she'd learned behind his back, and maybe she'd been wanting to try it out for ages. Behind every little blush, this was the woman that had hid. She blushed then, or maybe it was the rush, because there was no way she could feel embarrassed. Her garters were pressing into his pants leg.

She never wore underwear by a rule, and she never had. He smirked, and with no remorse pressed back. A fluid, strong movement, and she was stumbling back and onto the floor, his foot in her face, and where the hell had he pulled that gun from? They both laughed.

Behind every blushing couple, there was a monster waiting to be released.

"So, Larxene, to what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?" A click, the safety. Axel tilted his head back, pressed his shoe against her face, like he was trying to squash a cockroach that just wouldn't die.

She gasped, and she could swear she was enjoying this. Like old times. "I had a message to deliver," she cooed as best as she could. "A favor for an old friend, you see." She glanced around, waiting for him to ease up.

Axel crouched down, his gun now pressed to her forehead, and she glanced up. A new game, to see how far he could go, before she panicked and called the cops? He chuckled. Another time, another time. "Then get on with it, I don't have time for your games, Larxene."

Larxene smiled and his foot against her cheek was starting to hurt. She didn't mind being under him, as long as he could push her down on his own. This was a type of strength she'd figured Axel had long since lost (wealth breeds laziness, or so she thought). "I can't deliver a message with your foot in my face, Axel," she said slyly.

Axel's mouth curled into a grin, and he could have laughed in contempt. But, really, there would be no feeling behind it, so what would be the point in it? "You can talk, can't you? So, speak up, hmm?"

The trysts and turns, and his hand visibly tightening over the trigger. Larxene knew, he knew, he had no conscience left to stop him from pulling that trigger. He'd lost it long before he'd became a Nobody, long before Larxene herself had lost her own conscience.

It was an act of slow, painful murder that started from birth. Larxene wriggling under his torture (a mediocre form thereof) only made this fact more painfully obvious. Time stood still, tense moments passed.

And then Larxene decided that she wanted to live. "Xemnas wishes to… meet with you. And Roxas," she bit, giving an agonized cry at the added pressure. "He wants an answer! Damnit Axel, lay off!"

His foot lifted from her face, but his gun was still painfully cold against her skin. "Tell Xemnas… I meet on my own terms, and it's high time I stop playing puppet to him." A rough hand, grabbing her arm, and before she could blink, she was pressed against a wall.

A twinge of fear ran down her spine, and she almost gasped at the feeling. But like that, it was gone, and Axel couldn't have cared less. "Tell him I'll see him in Hell."

Larxene stared at Axel, her face neutral, eyes still wide from that twinge of something, and then she smiled, a nasty, sour thing, an imitation, but better, of Axel's own face. The ideas that crissed and crossed her mind, that reflected in Axel's eyes, and everything that was painfully obvious from the past, she couldn't help the giggle that escaped her lips. "Is this revenge, then, sugar?"

She could see how she had been attracted to this man once, when they were both decent people, unblemished in someone's sight out there. Axel's mind had fully wrapped around the idea (he'd embraced it, really) as soon as he'd found Roxas. It had been a mistaken Godsend, or it was yet to be his undoing. He figured there were only two options. "What else could it be, darling?"

She smiled and pushed him away, roughly, and her hair was a wreck and her makeup smudged. She walked out the door, calling behind her in a sing-song voice, "It's one versus ten, Axel. And Demyx is a fair-weather friend, wouldn't you say?"

Axel shut the door behind her, slammed it was more like. He had to bite back a curse with her smug threat. Larxene just smiled, and skipped down the stairs in high heels and a skimpy dress. Where could she go in the afternoon, all dolled up? Was there another toy that she could find anywhere near there? She hoped that the scientist was enjoying himself. Axel had to have been thinking in circles.

Like Roxas, who was ready to collapse. Vexen's eyes pierced his weakened body like ice to nerves, and he bit back a snarl. Say something, do something! Give him morphine, god, make the pain stop and let him get on with his life. Living for brief moments without it, it made his awareness of pain, his back and body, all that more obvious.

Naminé slipped underneath his arm, and she took a timid step towards the door. Vexen's hand, however, prevented her from entering any more than the tiny, timid step she'd taken.

"That's enough, child," Vexen interrupted cruelly, much to Naminé's dismay. She looked up to him, fear clouding her eyes, and he smirked at how apparent it was. Where had Roxas found this ragamuffin?

Roxas hardly noticed, and he felt a hand gripping his shoulder far too tightly, as Naminé stood, afraid and unable to move. His mind could only process so much, and Vexen could process so much more than the both of them. He could see that Roxas, as he was then, looked so unimpressive than the impression Marluxia and Luxord had given.

Was the experiment worth continuing? With a compromised subject, suffering from what appeared to be mild delirium and half starved besides, there was relatively little that Vexen could safely perform, could safely extract. The girl beside the subject shifted, blue eyes glancing upwards, and another shifting as someone came from behind.

Thought processes stalled and were interrupted, as the stranger looked at the rag-tags by the door, and the new member with the shifty disposition. Silence was exchanged with ease between them all, and then Roxas ruined the trade with a moan of pain before he slipped from the girl's grasp and onto his knees.

There was still much to be thought over, and considered. Roxas had to see Kairi. Vexen had to remain uncompromised. Another day, another street. Vexen stepped aside easily, and he couldn't help but look like a weasel. His eyes always seemed to be squinting at some stain that wasn't there. Roxas was close to crawling into the door.

"He says that he needs to see Kairi," Vexen admitted with no emotional attachment. Had he failed to stand aside, it could have been over before any of them knew the wiser. But it wasn't worth it and he vanished back into the darkness of the room. For all their claims of justice and being reasonable men, their darkness looked no different from any other gathering he'd ever seen.

It was a way to make them feel better, as if they weren't slowly falling from grace. She'd sing for them, she'd even walk into a room, and light seemed to gather around her. The man lifted Roxas, and he noticed a similar trait about the scared, fragile girl next to an equally fragile-seeming boy. Except she seemed to draw white to her, not light.

"Wait here. This's no place for a woman," and Naminé couldn't think of arguing. She'd wait, and make sure that no more ill omens went inside after Roxas. And she'd be waiting so that no more followed out after him.

Roxas's head hung, the strength draining from his body and into the grip his knuckles had on his fingers, and he grit his teeth. Breathing was almost hard to do, and he felt damp, damp and cold. With a force of will—everyone was laughing at him, and he couldn't even hear it- he managed to lift his head enough, and walk on his own two feet, with only a little bit of help from the stranger at his side.

Somewhere, someone was plotting against him. Roxas was too simple to know the difference, and too wrapped up in his own wants, needs, pains, and joys to care. The joys seemed to be lacking, but it didn't matter. They still existed – morphine.

Kairi and Riku were only mildly entertained, while DiZ played parent, guest, and all around nuisance in the same room. Many times Kairi had whispered for Riku to call it a night. Her giggles and tender touches as she did this were more than enough to make Riku pay attention, tommy gun forgotten on the floor.

"C'mon, honey," she whispered, lips pressed light against his ear, breath ghosting to his brain carrying the sweet smell of her and the promise of her words. And he was listening. "Let's have a little fun tonight, it's so dreary in here…"

Another giggle, and teasing kiss, and his fate was sealed. Kairi knew this all too well. Riku worked to hard, he had the ideas of someone used to work to scrape by, someone who was used to working because no one else could work. But everyone could work now, and Kairi wanted him to have a little playtime. He wanted her to stop being so damned irresistible. She smiled, and he blew his bangs out of his eyes.

"Please?"

DiZ watched them leave, her skirt waving about her and her hat wished to fly off her head. Arms clung to his and he placed his own hat on, pinstripes, suspenders, white shirts. His words were swallowed with a kiss as they took the back exit, back alleys, and into the bright streets.

Surrounded by people, but only really aware of each other's laughter. Another door opened, and a familiar face stumbled inside, his spirits no where near as good as that of the two that had just left.

"It's just a crush. I think she needs him more than she needs me. And maybe… Maybe he needs her too."

"Do you think they both don't need you?"

"Nah. They just need me in a different way, Mickey." A grin, he always seemed to be wearing one, and the mouse couldn't help but admire his disposition in a world that seemed to be lost in corruption. Corruption, wealth, and a lot of lust. Mickey almost wondered if Sora would lose himself in that, too.

Roxas shook his head, pulled himself up from his knees, and DiZ raised an eyebrow. But it wasn't like Roxas or anyone else could see. Roxas's hands were shaking, pale and clammy. He reached into his pocket, cash, cash, enough to pay Kairi back for her kindness, for helping him.

Because as pathetic as he was then, he knew he'd seen worse. The pain! He coughed, and the effort felt like knives to his lungs. "For Kairi," he labored. His eyes looked up at DiZ, and DiZ seemed to be two people, molding into each other continuously. A light, and a dark.

DiZ stooped, grabbed the money, and straightened before Roxas was even aware that any of them had happened. His hand moved to close over money that was no longer there. DiZ chuckled at the belated reaction, a small bit of pity over the poor boy for what he seemingly had been enduring for who knows how long.

"I will tell Kairi." DiZ motioned for the man who had lead Roxas in to help him up and lead him back out.

Roxas smiled. "Thank you." He went away, and he could feel something lift off of him—and then he was tossed outside, for the surprised Naminé to stand over. She looked at him as he lay on his back, her face confused, hand outstretched.

"A-are you alright?"

"Yes… Can you help me home?"

Things were changing.

Vexen smiled as well. Yes, the Superior would love to hear this news.