Alive. It was a word that Lea had once known the meaning of. Jumping up in the morning and scarfing down his breakfast, ignoring his mother’s chastising and rushing himself outside. He KNEW what it was to be alive. Every day was the same routine, but he always got sunlight, exercise, and excitement. Every day was the same, but blissfully so, spent with his best friend. But that was the last real time he truly felt the sensation of ‘ALIVE’. To be quite honest, the sensation of it had been overlooked and taken for granted by the teen. Now all he had of it was a memory… but it was vague. Except for in his dreams, where that sensation would mock him, his brain pulling from his only memories. He’d awake in his stark white room, drenched in sweat, crying and gasping out in agony before he’d fall back, exhausted from his bout and begin the restless tossing all over again for another 4 hours.
Lea knew what it was to be alive. But Axel didn’t. No, he only had the faintest ghost of a feeling, and even that wasn’t right. He had nothing, he remembered being told. Nothing, no one. He could be given purpose… But he felt like each day he stayed confined to these white walls, he was being driven further away from the purpose he used to have. Before all this. Before he had begun his descent into madness. Before he would lose himself and accept that Lea was no longer here. He was dead. It was only Axel. And Axel didn’t care about anything. He didn’t abide by weakness. That’s what he would continue to tell himself for the remaining days it would take to get into the swing of things here in Organization XIII. Tomorrow was his initiation. Which meant he was to be branded based on his uncanny new abilities that were only just now beginning to arise.
