Work Text:
08/10/2018
Hurt/Comfort
« It's alright. » those words that as they left his lips had the bitter taste of a lie. « It's alright. » he repeated undeterred, as if, keeping saying it, it could lose the dirty load of lies and become real, soft, warm.
As an answer, he received just a painful moan.
Axel felt a stabbing pain in his chest, cutting his breath, and sped up his pace, as much as the load he was carrying let him: Saïx’s barely conscious body.
« We’re almost there…h-hold on, okay? »
He was actually telling that to himself more than to him, because he didn’t know if he could hear him or even understand him.
“There’s so much blood.”
He swallowed in vain, his steps resounded hurried along the white corridor, huge, endless.
He almost flied to the room on which door was stamped the number VIII. Before entering, as if he was afraid of being followed, he looked around.
If he didn’t know it was impossible, he would have thought he felt fear. But no, it couldn’t be, he needed a heart for that, didn’t he?
Yet, the way his guts tangled, the dull whistle in his ears, his fast breathing…
No one had followed them, he got in, locking the door behind their back.
With a snort he laid Saïx down on the bed, and only then he dared to look at him, look at him closely. The wounds on his body made him ridiculously look like someone who had fought with a cat, but considering how deep they were it would have been a really big cat, more like a lion; he was losing blood, everywhere, but nothing was as serious as the huge slash that disfigured his face.
A perfect “X”, traced by an expert hand that had held the weapon as a pen.
A signature, a belonging sigil.
Axel felt himself trembling, then he came to his senses.
« It’ alright. » he didn’t even realize he had repeated the same dirty words.
His mind was foggy, full of voices, full of screams, some telling him to stop the bleeding, others that he first needed to find gauzes, bandages, disinfectant, some others just kept screaming, scared like children.
He removed his gloves, so that he could touch him with his warm hands.
« I need to take off your coat. » he said, moving his green gaze toward his eyes, hoping to find them conscious, alive. He would have given everything, even for one of his glances of cold disdain, like he had started doing since he had become Xemnas’s subordinate.
Fake glances, of course, but they were so full of sincere bitterness that sometimes he doubted it: he was such a good actor.
As soon as he placed a hand on his coat’s zipper, Saïx jerked to grab his wrist.
Here they were, those eyes, streaked of amber yellow, where once used to be bright green.
The look in his eyes made him look like a suffering animal, scared at the idea of receiving more pain.
Axel smiled, and gently loosen the tight grasp around his wrist.
« It’s me, don’t worry. I just want to help you. »
Saïx heaved a sigh and let him do.
Under the coat he was hiding not less serious wounds, the thick and ferrous smell of blood embed in Axel’s nostrils, who almost held his breath to not inhaling it.
Saïx snow-white skin, kissed by the moon, now looked more like the prelude to his death.
Axel medicated the wounds how he could, tightening the deeper ones, feeling the time’s cold breath on his neck, passing relentlessly.
« This is gonna hurt. » he warned, and snapping his finger he lit a little flame on the tip of his index finger. « I don’t know how else to do it, but it’s gonna hurt. »
Saïx’s eyes, blurred by the suffering, wandered around, as to let him imprint what was in front of him, then they closed: he was ready.
Axel stuck in his mouth an edge of the sheet to let him bite it, then he cauterized with the naked flame the “X” shaped wound on his face.
He didn’t scream, he didn’t let out a moan, but the creaking of his teeth, together with the strong smell of burned flesh, made him dizzy for a moment. He stopped only when the wound was completely closed, in order to go on with the bandage.
Axel realized just with a distant part of his mind that from that moment on Saïx’s face would have never looked the same. The same he used to kiss on the cheek when they were children and then running away, the same he used to smudge with ice cream, the same he used to put makeup on at Halloween: that face had disappeared, erased under mangled flesh.
Axel was going to get up, covered in burning sweat, he needed air before explanations. Despite he had no doubt that that mess was the Superior’s work, he wanted to hear it from Saïx’s lips. Maybe deep inside, he hoped to hear something different, that he had been hurt in battle, for example, that he had fought a particularly strong enemy.
That type of explanation wouldn’t have had consequences.
Weak, Saïx’s grasp imposed on him, grabbing his coat like it was a life raft.
« I’m here. » he muttered, sitting back by his side, he lifted his hand still without a glove, stained of his blood, to move away from his forehead his sapphire sweaty hair. « I’m not leaving. »
Saïx’s lips moved, a little trembling, letting out with a sigh the name Axel had left behind.
« Lea… »
« It’s alright. » bitter taste, on his tongue and his teeth. « It’s alright. »