game; Kingdom Hearts II
pairing; Roxas/Naminé
warnings; none
disclaimer; I do not own Kingdom Hearts II or the characters used.
i.Naminé doesn't dream.
Actually, none of them do - call it a glitch in the system, one out of two things that remind the Nobodies what they really are, what they never can be. The other thing? The fact that they do not possess a heart.
There's not anything strange about it, it's natural for them after all, and so it never really is brought up; they've all come to acceptance that it is merely the way things are - it's not like they have a choice or anything.
Eventually, the rumor of a thirteenth Organization member reaches also Naminé; she overhears Larxene whining about it to Axel, and she stops in her current artwork, crayon pressed briefly against the sheet of paper in order to hear better.
They pass by her room quickly, though, without her being able to make out anything other than the fact that he's a real 'feisty one' - a comment from number VIII, naturally.
She even builds up the courage to ask Demyx about it as she accidentally runs into him in the headquarter's library some time after that - he sniggers at her question, as if recalling a certain memory, before answering.
"Yeah, there sure is - you'd never guess whose Nobody he is!" Demyx explains, voice thick with barely-concealed excitement, and he doesn't give Naminé a chance to guess either as he carries on, "he's the Keyblade wielder's!"
"..Sora's?" the girl wonders, doe-like eyes widening.
"That's right! He's a real weird one - kind of grumpy, but you should see the way he tells Axel off! I predict a whole lot of amusement from now on.. oh, and he's kind of different than us, too."
"Different?"
"Yeah.. like you, I guess. Special powers or something. I dunno, though.." he trails off, pouting. "Well, I gotta go! Duty's calling!" Demyx stiffens his back and makes a faux-salute at that, before disappearing.
"Like me.." Naminé mumbles absently, thoughts filling the air until it almost crackles with the tension.
ii.She doesn't feel very different from the others. Sure, she controls the power of linking peoples memory together or tearing them apart as she pleases-
(-"a witch", Axel had claimed huskily, eyeing her with bright malice in his green orbs, "a witch in the disguise of a princess")
-but on the inside, they all lack the true key to humanity. They are all half-whole, like when you begin a dish you have done a thousand times before but forget to add the main ingredient, and leave it like that.
Naminé has certain powers, yes, but she still doesn't dream-
(she still doesn't feel).
The day is as unchanging as the one before it, but as she steps into the clinical white hallways that seem to go on for miles, she crosses path with the boy who is the main news these days.
The first thing she notices is his eyes; a vast deep-blue, endlessly out-stretched and easily lost in.
"You're.." he begins, but he bites back whatever he was about to say and raises a hand to run through his dirty-blonde hair.
Naminé stays frozen on the spot, her dead insides almost painful in its silence - if she'd had a heart, perhaps it would do a backflip now.
"I'm Roxas."
I'm Naminé, she wants to say, rose-kissed lips aching to form words. She stays completely unmoving, though. He struggles with whatever it was he wanted to say, before finally lifting his gaze to pierce hers.
"I dreamt about you last night."
Not a single muscle reacts at that; rather, she becomes even more immobile, if possible. But..
I'm Naminé, and I've heard so much about you, she wants to say. Your eyes are beautiful, she wants to explain. Tell me about dreams, she wants to plead. If I could dream, I'd probably dream about you, too, she wants to confess.
It comes out as nothing; not even as a puff of breath, not even as a choked mess of strangled words - just nothing. Just like always.
"I know it's weird, I don't know you, but I just.. just.."
"Roxas!" a shrill cry echoes throughout the hallways.
He turns towards the sound of footsteps that has not reached them yet, and then back to Naminé. She'd need a sharp intake of breath if her lungs weren't already dead.
"I have to go."
And she's left standing, loose-limbed and pale, the silence offering her company.
iii.Her first meeting with the keyblade-bearer after Roxas' departure almost knocks her off of the solid ground she's planted on.
His eyes are even more vibrant than she remembers, even more mesmerizing - exact copies of Roxas'.
"Kairi?" he prompts, voice tentative.
"No", she smiles. "I'm not her." You're not him.
"What crazy ideas have you gotten into your pretty little head, now, hmm?" Axel sing-songs, his smirk humorless. "You very well know that we cannot feel."
"I am aware of that, yes", she mumbles, her voice a melodic chord, beautiful in its apathy.
"So what? You think you love him? Is that your conclusion?"
Naminé doesn't answer - she watches the sleeping Sora, ever-silent, and wonders what he sees behind those tightly closed eyelids of his, hiding the portal to a spiral of memories she has of a not-boy.
"My conclusion is this - I cannot dream. But if I could, I'd dream of.."
(worlds lost, worlds found)
(earth-scented color-stark glowing-with-life summer)
(a possible life)
(sand-beaches)
(wishes written in the sand and lost to the tidal waves)
(a bright, unforgettable, blunt, open-wide, enchanting blue stealing her gravity)"..him."
"He's nothing, you know. Just like you. Just like all of us."
"Yes. He's nobody. He's nothing. But to me.. I think he might be everything."
And she says nothing as the redhead throws his head back and laughs his throat dry, because out of the corner of her eye, she notices Sora fidgeting in his sleep.
(and she urges her not-heart to at least flutter a little at the notion, but it says cold and ever-sleeping).
iv. A/N;