All In The Name Of...

Madhouse

"...and so she said that we could work on it anytime!" I finished explaining to both Axl and Nikki, who were both looking at me with varying emotions. Axl, after a moment, stormed off in anger, and I knew enough not to follow him. Nikki, at least, was willing to talk about it.

"You're fucking crazy, you know that, right?" He told me bluntly. "You're jumping back onto the same damn train that you know is gonna crash again. Oh, and might I add that Sonic tried to kill me!" I waited a moment to see if he was going to say anything else. "Listen, I know you think this band still has this star quality, and I ain't gonna say it didn't, but don't you think it ended for a reason, Stella?"

I looked at my best friend pleadingly. "I think that if it was meant to end when it did, I wouldn't be seeking it out again so long afterward. Nikki, I really think I have a good feeling about this." Nikki sighed, knowing how stubborn I was. 

After a second, he frowned at me. "Look... I think this is an accident waiting to happen, Stella. But I also think that if anyone's gonna fix a bunch of old friends again, it's you. I don't think you should do it, but I ain't about to stop you. Fuck, I wouldn't let anyone stop me, anyway..." The bassist chuckled, sighing. "You gonna go after Ax, or..?"

Sighing, I didn't answer, until Nikki nodded at me. "I'll wait here, Stel. We have to meet Dj and James for breakfast soon, anyway." I gave him a quick hug, and scurried off upstairs to find Axl.

There was no surprise whatsoever when the smell of hard alcohol hit me as soon as I opened the door. Axl, both literally and figuratively, was out of his mind. "What the fuck is wrong with you?!" He slurred, though it didn't necessarily scare me too much. I was used to Axl punching walls and screaming drunken obscenities. Hell, he'd even slapped me once or twice. 

"We were doing fucking fine! But you're so clamored up on three motherfuckers who left you in the dust that you don't even give a shit! They're the past, Stella. Why the fuck can't you just keep up with everything?" He sucked in a deep breath, and then, in his drunken stupor, the rest of Axl's anger came out. "You, and Slash, never wanting to do anything but the washed-out shit! Fuck, at least you two stay... Steven getting too goddamned high to even play anyway! Izzy, my own fucking best friend, up and left me because he couldn't take the heat for being a junkie!"

It was no secret, exactly, that Axl had been hurt when Izzy left. No one would have known it, of course; Axl was superb at masking his emotions with aggression and alcohol. He'd hardly even opened up to me about it. I still talked to both Izzy and Steven, though, so it wasn't like I was detached from their sides of things.

"It's not fucking fair!" Axl roared, slamming his fist into one of the bedroom walls. Bits of blood seeped slowly from his knuckles, and pieces of the wall fell onto our floor. "No one fucking gets it! Not my family, not my band, not my wife! Nobody seems to fucking get it!" He started punching the wall again, leaving a trail of hand-sized holes in it, and more blood began to leak, slowly but steadily.

Suddenly, Axl stopped wailing on the door, and Nikki slammed the door open, creating even more striking tension throughout the room. "Go," Axl muttered venomously, swinging around and splattering just a bit of blood on my white Thin Lizzy shirt. "Go, before I beat the ever-living fuck out of you both. Go!"

I, on my own, would have stayed. I wasn't afraid of Axl; rather, I felt as if it were my job to take care of him, whether it got me a bloody lip or not. Nikki, however, was more rational than I was, forcibly yanking me out of the room. "Are you okay?" He asked, watching me. I nodded, a lump growing in my throat. That was the same question I wished more people would ask Axl. I didn't say anything more, though, as Nikki handed me my leather jacket and we headed toward the door.