don't say anything
Naminé always liked the silence. It was much more preferable to grating laughter and twisted smirks, eyeless demons and claw-like fingers pressing, prying against her neck, trying to burrow into the delicate blue veins that lay just below the surface – "draw me a picture, princess."
And she couldn't say anything – wasn't expected to say anything. Just nod her head meekly and leave it laying on her empty chest, trying to listen to her heartbeat.
Nothing.
And so, with glassy eyes and trembling fingers, she would pick up her crayons and draw, just like the monsters told her too, until she turned into a monster herself. She can see it, the darkness under her skin that they are so drawn to with their teeth and claws and pointed nails.
It hurts sometimes, but she waves that thought aside because she is a nobody and nobodies can't hurt – just presses her lips together and tightens her grip on a red crayon until it
Snaps.
Even around Roxas, set free from her Rapunzel tower (but looks can be deceiving, and she is not Rapunzel – it's that other girl with the red hair and pretty smile she looks ohsomuch like, yet she never smiles anymore) she still refuses to say much other than is absolutely necessary.
She doesn't trust her voice, lips cracked, dusty, and tongue unused like a piece of dry leather - neglect and abuse and uncertainty – and she wonders if she opens her mouth she'll let loose all those repressed s c r e a ms ("axel! larxene! marluxia!" and they're all blurred into one). She can still feel them. She'll never forget, not like Sora – monsters do not have that luxury. Rather, she has claws raking up her legs, under the hem of her skirt, golden eyes and childish laughter; "incy wincy spider ran up the waterspout." Instead, she presses her fingers to her lips and goes
"Shhhh."
Yet when she holds hands with Kairi, something in her seems to change. All that fear, neglect, regret – a dusty doll, played and used and eventually discarded – seems to pale away to nonexistence. The blonde girl sighs, Kairi's fingernails digging into her skin and Kairi's eyes raking her body and Kairi's lips forming her words, or… Or maybe it is the other way around? Glowing lights explode before her eyes like fireflies and she can't see, can't hear, can't think.
Let Kairi do it all for her. Let Kairi carry her memories, stark and raw, that never really went away no matter how hard she scrubbed – w h i t e w a s h – and she feels the red-head shudder, seeming to buckle under the weight of invisible claws and grinning nobodies and being thrown to the floor again and again because that's what Naminé remembers and she is Naminé, Kairi and Naminé, Kairi Naminé, KairiNaminé (so why is Naminé crying…?)
"Cheer up, baby," Kairi whispers, purple eyes blurring at the edges as Naminé slowly, ever so s l o w l y, fades from existence. "You don't need to say anything. From now on…
I'll be your everything."