The Postulation of a Flower
A Kingdom Hearts one shot (drabble?)- Kairi x Naminé and Roxas x Sora
Written by Tsukiko Muse Kiisa
Dedicated to Kylara Kitsune for her marvelous drabbles, and to my little sister, who suffers through my pairing-swings (like mood swings, but with favorite parings), my constant brain state of 'shounen-ai' that really does ruin everything, and my just as constant 'guess what I'm writing now!!' speeches. Sorry, dear. Thanks for being a patient victim to the point of playing every single KH game with me.
Inspired halfway by a picture of a picked-apart daisy I randomly found on Deviantart one day titled 'things of love'. Thought I should mention that.
Standard disclaimers.
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Roxas decided that if the poor yellow daisy that Sora was picking ruthlessly apart ended on an odd petal, then Sora loved him back.
You know what he was thinking.
Sora loves me...
Sora loves me not.
He loves me...
He loves me not.
Roxas actually couldn't believe that Sora was picking apart that certain yellow daisy. That yellow daisy was special. Maybe someone was giving Roxas a sign.
He loves me...
That yellow daisy had grown in Naminé's garden. Naminé had lived in a tiny little house in a city, and she had only a tiny little garden. Any closer to the heart of the city and she wouldn't have had any at all. In fact, the smog was thick and close enough to tint anything she tried to grow grey.
So she grew yellow daisies, knowing that only a yellow flower could fight off city grey.
He loves me not.
And that yellow daisy had not only grown in Naminé's garden, but Kairi had picked it. One day on one of her many, many visits to Naminé's tiny little city house, on one of the picnics the two women indulged in, Kairi reached out and picked a daisy, which she had only done on special days. She knew how much the bright flowers meant to Naminé, little silent Naminé in her white dress painting city rain.
Kairi would tell her, paint something happy. Paint us, in a field. Paint a daisy. Paint yourself in a little yellow daisy.
Naminé would say, I thought you wanted something happy.
I need him...
Sora sat next to him on a park bench, worried and downcast. Sora was hardly ever down like this, he was usually just like a happy little kid. Kairi should've brought Sora to a picnic, and Naminé could've painted him. That would've been a happy, beautiful picture in water color, a smiling Sora with the yellow daisies.
It occurred to Roxas that Sora and Naminé had barely met. Kairi had only brought them in the same place once or twice, and Sora had been in awe of the quiet, thin girl, of her powerful aura of silence and calm, of the delicate ink sketch she drew up and down Kairi's arm as the two chatted peacefully. He ended up too shy of the artist too seek her out like he would've anyone else, because he was so amazed of her.
And she's been through a lot of really bad things and known a lot of really bad people, Kairi would say gently, so it's by strength of will alone that she's still with us now. You know?
The brunette nervously twisted off another grey-streaked petal, looking off at the setting sun instead of at his hands or the boy seated beside him on the bench.
He doesn't need me.
Roxas, actually, had never spoken to Naminé face to face. But he loved Sora, who was really close to Kairi, and Kairi and Naminé... were very, very close. Close in a way that held each other during the nights so they wouldn't fall apart.
That yellow daisy was one of the daises that Kairi planted last spring while cracking jokes or Naminé, who faithfully watered the seeds until they grew and unfurled their ladies' skirts of pure sunlight.
This daisy was one of the daisies that Naminé and Kairi read children's storybooks to when they looked sickly.
That yellow daisy happened to be the daisy that Kairi choose to pick on a certain fateful day, the one flower she decided to set delicately into Naminé's corn silk hair with a pure kiss to remain a memory on the side of her lips. This was one of the very, very few flowers that Naminé kept in her hair, because it was one of the very few days that Kairi's colorful kisses made her feel beautiful enough to wear a spot of sunlight in her hair. It was one of the days when Kairi's laughter was so loud in her ears that she could brave the noise of the traffic to walk the city streets.
He's so beautiful...
Kairi met Naminé for the first time because she decided to wander from her normal route after her weekly indulgence in the city. She found herself walking some outskirt road, coming to the fringe of the concrete jungle. And the fist color she had seen in an hour was a yard of green grass and yellow daisies.
The way Kairi told it, an angel had descended from the clouds, clothed in a white sundress, and sat down in the middle of a city yard to bless it with heaven's sunlight flowers. And the angel looked up to see Kairi walking there, and Kairi just had to walk up and talk to her.
And no angel could be prepared for Kairi. Any of the heavenly host would end up dumbfounded as to how and why an adorable red-haired human was sitting in their yard with them drinking pomegranate tea and eating mini salad sandwiches, talking pointlessly about stars and fairytales and popular songs.
Naminé, it ended out, hadn't really held a conversation since she had left home. But that was fine, because Kairi had left home to and hadn't found anyone she could talk to since without getting mad at them, her father, everyone.
But I can't have him.
Roxas's heart wrenched again as Sora pulled off another petal without meaning to, getting little flecks of waxy yellow in his fingertips. He really should've told Sora not to hurt the precious flower the second Kairi handed it to him, even though it was half-wilted from being in a vase for about five days now.
He shouldn't let Sora destroy something that should be put in a museum as the much-sought-after Proof that True Love exists.
True love was the blonde woman who hadn't spoken in years... and the redhead that just couldn't stop talking to her. True love was the heart poured out from one woman to the woman that faithfully caught every drop in a crystal glass. True Love was the crying artist that held her screaming girlfriend and calmly threw away the pieces of a smashed cell phone, only hesitating on the front screen, with its flickering pixels that said 'dad's cell'. True Love was the social recluse and the groundless traveler sitting calmly in a public square for an entire day doing nothing but painting and playing with the kids that passed by them and holding hands. True Love was being able to touch an angel and seeing her smile at your fingers in your hair, true love was seeing the smile of the most beautiful woman in the world as she placed a flower behind your ear and keeping it there all day.
And Roxas was going to let Sora tear the precious proof of love apart, because he had to know.
He loves me...
Every once in a while, Sora would talk about Kairi and Naminé, about how they both got these beautiful silver rings for each other, about how Kairi set Naminé up with an arts agent, about the beautiful flowers Naminé grew. Whenever he griped to Kairi about how college wasn't the same since she dropped out and ran away, she sighed and would eventually get him a vase with daisies in it for a souvenir.
Sora would tell Roxas about how alike the girls were, but different, how much of their pasts they had in common, how sweet they both were and how perfect for each other, how proverbial in how they complete each other. Roxas knew that Sora envied their perfectness, their ease as lovers, their completion as soulmates.
And before, all the time, Roxas would pretend that he was more interested in studying like the idiot he was. Like the struggle of Kairi and Naminé, the two beings of love blossoming in a city, wasn't an important story compared to his tale of being sad and unrequited.
He loves me not.
Do you want to know about true love? True love was something in Naminé's rare giggle, something in the stroke of her brush when the model was the girl sitting across from her, something in the way a flower rested in front of her next-to-white hair. True love was something in Kairi's wondering eyes, something in the lightness of her feet when she was going back home to her yard and her angel, something in the way she brushed Naminé's hair as she set one single brave daisy, one glorious thing of light, one sacrifice of love just where it was grown to be.
Love wasn't just in his desire to have Sora's eyes on him or in him buying the boy anything he wanted or in his sacrificing classes he really wanted to go to so that he could spend more time with him. Love was in two shattered things of love holding each other and saying, it'll be alright now, hold your face up, wear a flower in your hair to remind you of me when you feel sad.
Always, always remember me when you see one of our Yellow Daisies. Our sunlight in the city.
True love was something in Kairi's face. True love was something in her face that day, earlier that sunny day. True love was in the way her hands held the bouquet of yellow daisies and refused to let go even when she should have laid them down at that moment of the service.
The trickles of light coming from her eyes were true love; the look on her face could only be something a being of love had put there as she watched the sermon drone on.
Love had to be Kairi at Naminé's funeral.
He loves me...
No, even that doesn't do Love any justice.
Love was something in Naminé's face as Kairi left their picnic that morning saying she had a meeting with Naminé's agent she had to go to. Love was her realization that she should be going to the meeting, not Kairi. Love was her fixing the flower in her hair, the last one Kairi picked for her, and gathering up her handbag and deciding for the first time since she was twelve, she was going to go out by herself and take a walk in the city.
Love was the bravery in the yellow daisy that dared to bloom in the concrete jungle. Love was how she crossed street after street resolutely, knowing that the special flower that Kairi chose to pick was in her hair.
Love was Kairi not even looking at the girl and the smashed-up car and the strands of blonde on the street, but just knowing, just picking up the daisy on the grimy asphalt and leaving. Love was something in her face when she did that.
He loves me not.
Sora was getting down to the last few petals of the flower that Kairi sent him in a glass vase about five days ago as a souvenir, but Roxas refused to look at the number left. All he could think about was Sora trying to hold Kairi at the churchyard and her flinging her self away and calmly telling him that Naminé had been Buddhist so it was pointless to make sure she was buried on holy ground. She had only relinquished her hold on the yellow bouquet once her best friend coaxed it from her... then gave it to Roxas so that he could hold Kairi's shaking hands.
But somehow Sora ended up with that one flower from the dorms. The symbol of trust and bravery was being sacrificed before Roxas's eyes for his own tiny little attempt and grey city love.
He couldn't let that happen.
He closed his own fist over Sora's and the dilapidated flower. His distracted, puffy-eyed friend turned to him with a shock. "Huh?"
"That's... one of their flowers, you know."
Sora started at his hands in horror. "Oh my god! I didn't mean to-"
"No, no look, it's fine. There are still a few left, see?"
He looked. Exactly five petals. "See, Sora? Odd number. Hm, one for you, for me, for Kairi, for Naminé..."
"What about the last one?"
Roxas looked at the sad flower, a stem and a head and one solitary, brave bit of sunshine left. He plucked it carefully, then handed it to the brunette.
"Sora... I've realized something. I've let so much time go by. In the time I have wasted, Kairi met Naminé, fell in love with her, and watched her die. And I've sat here like college and I are more important."
Sora's fist closed over the final petal as he stared at his blond friend. "Sora... there's something I've needed to tell you for a really, really long time."
-end