Chapter 84 - Us Against The World : Part 2

"About my disappearing hands and eye-"

The leftover cupcakes were sitting on the table near them. Axel managed to eat them when his hands finally went back to normal. Both of them had arrived in the apartment just a while ago.

Now Axel tried to explain everything to Adreanna about his situation.

"I think- I think I'm not a human anymore." Axel took a deep breath and stared at her blue eyes.

Unlike his ones that one of them had turned red.

"The demon version of father, you, and Kiaran were- they were-" His heart pounded in his ears as he felt like a void of hell swallowed him.

"They-" He gulped, an intense wave of fear overwhelming his senses. The feeling of being stabbed by demon Cain's hand with an insanely amount of pain haunted him like a ghost.

Axel trembled, and his eyes felt like they were being wrapped in a white sheet. "They were making me-"

"Hey, take a deep breath." Adreanna's emotionless voice oddly felt comforting as she awkwardly brought her hands to Axel's waist.

She wrapped her hands around him and hugged the boy tight. "You don't have to explain if you don't want to."

"No, you need- you need to know," Axel mumbled in between her hug.

"They are trying to make me into their dead Axel." He gently pushed Adreanna away and stared at her face again. He had calmed down a little bit.

"The me in the other world is dead, and they are trying to make a replica of him." He explained. It was easy to know that his other self had somehow gone somewhere until the demons were desperate enough to make him something he was not.

If the other Axel had gone somewhere in the world, they could easily bring him back. But if his other self had gone to the afterlife, then they could not bring him back.

So they tried another way to deny his death by making Axel their 'real' Axel.

"They changed me. It hurt so much when they did it. I felt like I was dying. And I think dying is better than being in that situation." Axel stroked his hair back and diverted his gaze to the floor with an empty stare.

"When they tried to turn me into a demon, I had prayed for the world to just kill me instead." Axel smiled pathetically to himself before he continued.

"But either the world was being kind, or it was just too cruel to let me die."

Adreanna stiffened at his words. She stared at him, almost pitying. It was vague anyway since the girl could not express anything on her face.

She realized that this boy was too young for that. She never thought about it because she had been like this since she was a child. So she did not care about Axel because they were the Vergessene anyway.

But Axel had gone through another type of hell in the other world.

"The thing is, I think this may be part of his power," Axel uttered and brought his hands up that had started to act up a little again.

They disappeared and reappeared all they wanted, like a broken film.

"I think everyone has power in the demon world." Axel waved his hand a little, trying to bring it back.

He looked over to Adreanna, who was focused on his hands too. He opened his mouth to continue again. "Like how Kiaran could thrall my movement and brain, or Cain could summon a hoard of undead or your other self with-"

"The porcelain feathers." Adreanna cut him off and stared at his eyes with unexplainable emotions.

"Yes, that."

"This might be his power that I got or a side effect for becoming what I'm not supposed to become," Axel explained and sighed when his arms started to disappear too.

"-because I'm a human, right?" He asked but almost like trying to reassure himself. That he was still him, that everything would be okay. Even though it really wasn't.

But he would wait for a happy ending, eventually. Every story had an ending, and he wanted a happy one.

"If I become a demon, I should've been mindless like those people back then." He carried on, chuckling with irony in his tone. "I just don't know what I am."

He looked at a ceiling with surrender and snatched his eyepatch open, revealing his inhuman eye. "I never knew what I am."

"You're Axel," Adreanna stated, tilting her head to the side a little as she stared at the boy.

"You said the same thing as my best friend." Axel closed his eyes, and the memory of how Rune reassured that he was still Axel in her eyes no matter what happened played in his mind.

He chuckled again. It sounded sad this time. "It's funny how she said that, yet she's not my best friend anym-"

Axel quickly cut himself off and smiled at his sister. "Nevermind."

Adreanna scanned the boy with her ocean eyes. Axel knew she loved to take the situation in front of her intensely, but it was chilling for some reason.

"Let's learn to control it." She suddenly spoke and pointed at his disappearing hands with her delicate finger. "Your new power."

Axel blinked and looked back and forth between his hands and her. He frowned a little and waited for Adreanna to speak more.

"Instead of treating it like your weakness, make it your strength."

✵✵✵✵✵✵

Axel had been staring at his hands for almost an hour now. Sweats formed on his foreheads as he glared at them to disappear.

He had fallen into a fit of triumph when his hands had reappeared again. But then, another problem occurred, and he could not make them disappear.

Adreanna had just finished renewing his bandages and looked at Axel's hands with two almost curious eyes.

She turned on the television and let it run in the background as the assassin helped Axel by staring at his hands too. She sat beside her youngest brother and joined his staring contest.

"Is it going to help just by staring?" She chimed in as both of them never diverted their gaze from the hands.

"I don't know what to do," Axel uttered and widened his gaze, hoping that his hands would miraculously vanish.

"I learned from someone that to do something, you must have a reason." Adreanna began and stared at a pink ribbon on the corner of her whiteboard.

"Whether it's killing or surviving, you must have a reason why you did it." She added and put a hand on Axel's shoulder. The boy looked back at her with a questioning gaze.

She gripped the shoulder. "Think of a reason why you want to control them."

"I will make the Livedam city safe from those petty criminals!" The mayor's voice was heard from the television and broke the atmosphere between the two.

Adreanna's gaze darkened at the voice and stared at the government pictures on her wall.

Axel was not surprised when he saw a picture of the mayor as well when he followed her gaze.

"I need to go tonight." Said the oldest as she stood up from the bed.

"Do you really have to kill him?" Axel ventured. His eyes followed Adreanna's movement as the assassin loaded her guns.

"He had raped children and silenced them. He was using his power as the new mayor to hide his evil deeds."

Adreanna put the gun inside her pocket and moved her head over to Axel with blue eyes that had frozen into piercing ice. "I've killed all the governments. I need to kill the rest."

Axel nodded and diverted his gaze to the pictures of the governments again. "But they just recycled them and got the new ones when one died."

"You've killed the last mayor when-"

The flash of how all the buildings exploded when they were fighting each other suddenly appeared, causing Axel to clear his throat at the sudden awkwardness.

"The last mayor is dead because she was taking the people's money all she wanted, and then the new mayor is even worse than her."

He stared at her again. "So, are you going to kill him again, Adreanna?"

"Until when?"

Adreanna put a smoke bomb inside her clothes. "Until there are no corrupted ones in the governments."

Axel sighed and moved his mismatched eyes over to the television. He watched the news teller talking about some useless stuff and sighed.

"But Adreanna, I think" He paused and tilted his head at the television. "I think everyone is a little bit corrupted, don't you think?"

"I mean, look at Kiaran." Axel stared at how the news spoke about the mercenary again with hollowness in his eyes.

"Look at me." Then the television changed into his face, talking about him.

"Or you," Axel stated the last sentence as he came back to watch Adreanna again.

He was right, she thought. She was corrupted as well. But if you had already been born as a corrupted one, did that mean she was normal and not corrupted? She had been like this since the beginning anyway.

But she needed to do this. She needed to do this for her.

Adreanna stared at the pink ribbon again. She needed to do this for Maera.

"I have my reason to do this, Axel." She answered without looking at the boy.

"Can I come? I might learn a reason to control this thing." Axel offered, smiling innocently as if he was not a deadly murderer.

"Well,"

Adreanna never had anyone to come. She always worked alone. But he could come anyway.

"Sure."

She was not aware that she had just created another reason to live. To kill and protect.

It was Axel.. But she hadn't realized it yet.