kh_drabble | Glass Eyes

Title: Glass Eyes
Rating: PG
Word Count: 302
Notes: An examination of Marluxia and Axel.

Namine was always most afraid of Marluxia, but perhaps she should have feared Axel more.

Marluxia was the man who first imprisoned her, deep within these white, white walls. He had long brown hair like a wolf’s mane and he spoke quietly, quietly, and so arrogant like he was a lord and not a lowly neophyte within the Order’s ranks. He was a lord in this castle. He threatened his seniors and arranged for assassinations. He was an assassin. He would kill and kill until he had found his heart and its key. He would swallow his heart whole, the key’s blades shearing up his insides like a many-petaled flower with knives for points.

But he was not whole. They were not whole and these days he wasn’t even Marluxia but a white thing that stole along the edges of corridors, changing shapes endlessly in a spiraling dusk because it could never remember….

But Axel was the one with a face like a porcelain mask so fine that it was a wonder it was never shattered. His eyes were like water in glass marbles and his smile was like a smile painted onto a grinning doll. Axel smiled and smiled and the one time he had not smiled was the day he called Marluxia a traitor. That day his eyes had been wild, the paint of his gone face slick and translucent. Only briefly. In moments he had been made-up again and he was watching with laughter as the Order crumbled into chaos around him.

But this was his secret.

Axel controlled things. He had to control things, be in control of things. He used them because he refused to be used.

He was not a puppet.

His hands would be the ones that pulled the strings.

He would not be used.