She meets him in the Underworld.
She should not be there but is she, and it's okay because he should not be there either, though admittedly for entirely different reasons.
When she sees him, she thinks she should know him. He is very familiar and very different at the same time, and her heart knows a name that her mind can't remember. But her eyes see red and black and an arm that almost isn't there, and she knows that she should be hurting, even if she can't remember why.
She tells him as much and wonders why she isn't surprised when he says nothing. Again, a name pops up that she wants to remember but can't, and she knows that she's on the edge of something very important, if only she knew exactly what it was.
Squall (Leon) calls her name from somewhere outside the cave, and she looks at him one more time and tells herself that she doesn't know him. She doesn't know him. She doesn't know him.
She sees something in his garnet eye (so close to red, but why would she think that? what's so special about red?) that she knows is reflected in hers; he saw someone else, too.
--
They meet again.
She says nothing this time, and neither does he, and they sit in silence and bask in the not-memories of the not-them.
She still doesn't know him, and still doesn't know Him, but that's okay because she's only met him once, and He doesn't even exist (anymore), and she's sure that she's going insane. He is strange. He is familiar. He is soothing. He is chaotic. He is not the one her heart almost remembers. But that doesn't mean he doesn't make her feel something.
He says nothing when she leaves, but she knows that he knows, and she thinks that that's good enough for her.
--
The next time he speaks.
"You see someone else when you look at me." It's not a question, and yet somehow not a statement, and she finds the mix of the two a hit a little to close to home, even though she doesn't really know where home is. His voice is too deep, too rough, too dry to her in comparison to the voice that she can't remember. She doesn't remember velvet, she doesn't remember gunpowder, she doesn't remember pale skin and smoky scent and eyes like blood, but she knows that she doesn't remember this.
"So do you," she accuses, and her hair is not blonde enough, her eyes are not green enough, and she is not innocent enough, so he looks away with a grunt and says nothing. Because it's true.
She feels the need to defend herself against this man who is not the man that she doesn't remember, and she doesn't know why.
"I… don't know who I see, though.. I don't see you, but I don't see him either."
"So you see nothing."
There is irony in his voice. Irony she knows to well and doesn't know at all.
"Do you know who you see in me?" Because she is nosey and she is imperfect and she wants to know if his heart hurts the way hers does when she looks at him and doesn't know who she's seeing.
His words are quiet and scratchy. "Yes."
So he knows. He knows who she isn't, and she knows why he is silent, and she is alone in the pain that isn't there because there is no reason for everything to hurt like that. "Who is it?" Rub some salt in the wound that never was. She's starting to sound like Cloud. She's starting to sound like a Nobody.
"Someone who is lost to the Worlds."
He leaves without a backwards glance.
The dismissal hurts because it's new and it feels like she's known it forever. He shares her pain.
--
"She smiled more than you."
She isn't expecting openness and is surprised. It takes a minute for her to realize it's him, talking about the girl who isn't Her. She doesn't know how to reply.
"There isn't much to smile about these days."
She says nothing. There's nothing to say. She leaves him ten minutes later in silence.
--
It has become a game of spite, and neither of them can win.
Her only ammunition is smiling. So she walks the corridors with a bright smile, cuts through the heartless with a dark smirk, cartwheels and dances over the rough stone with a manic grin. He is going nowhere but he is always going, and she is always following with a smile because that's the only thing that she knows she has going for her.
He has better weapons. He has more weapons. His mere presence; his silence, his half-glares, his quick quiet movements. Everything cuts her like a knife and she doesn't know why she stays but she does and it hurts and it's fulfilling at the same time. It is all very confusing. He strides and she dances and together they are a storm of self-loathing and masochism.
They fight together (sickeningly familiar to both of them, even if only one of them knows why) and bleed together and heal together and she is becoming a wraith in the darkness of the Underworld and he is becoming something lesser than that, even. They are not living, they are surviving.
They hate each other. They love each other. They nothing each other.
And yet they can't leave each other alone.
--
He finds her surrounded by Dusks.
She isn't surprised that the Heartless have begun avoiding them. She feels empty, now, and he is dead anyway. She knows this as clearly as she knows the not-red of his eye (singular, she thinks, and giggles).
He cuts through them easily and leaves her raw and confused because he is not the first one to save her and then just walk off (and that time with Squ--Leon doesn't count because he totally didn't save her, she was going fine by herself) and he has won this round of the game once more.
Him, twelve. Her, nil.
She tells herself that it's only for amusement that she's keeping score.
But she has never been one to let someone stomp over her pride without defending herself, so she follows him and she's frowning, so really, he just won that round, too.
"I didn't need your help, you know!"
It rings like a broken chime in the darkness of the halls, and he just barely turns and looks at her out of his good eye. He says nothing. He leaves.
"Hey! I'm talking to you! You big meanie!"
He tenses. Stops. Breathes. And for a moment, she can see that this game is hurting him too, even if she doesn't know what she did or what she said that was so like Her to make him break down, even slightly.
She leaves soon after with her newest victory in mind.
Maybe she's won this game after all.
--
"Why do you come here?"
He is sick of her and their game and he's never had much patience, even back in his dead home World. He wants peace. He wants rest. He wants to fade into a place that isn't light or darkness, because light burns and dark freezes, and she is in between because she doesn't know what she wants, either.
"Because you remember."
It is a simple answer with so many complicated ways to interpret.
"And I don't. And I hate you for it. You're too much like Him, but you're not Him, and I don't even know who He is and it hurts."
She is brutal and honest and he can't find the strength to care all that much.
"It hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, and I hate hate hate hate hate you for it."
He turns away because it hurts him too, so he doesn't see her when she runs up behind him and doesn't feel her until she wraps her arms around his back and clings to him like a child seeking comfort. He is not comforting, and she is not a child, but somehow they are soothed for a second because they are not Them and right now they don't have to be.
"But it's okay because I love you more than I hate you."
And she is gone and he is alone and he can still feel the warmth against his back and he thinks that maybe that is the kind of light he needs.
Then he remembers Her and he walks away because this light is not as gentle as it used to be.
She leaves him wanting it, though, and he can't forget that no matter how hard he tries.
--
His eyes are not red and her eyes are not green, and they come together in a clash of teeth and tongues because it hurts but the pain feels good.
He grinds into her with enough force to make her cry out and she rakes her nails across his back and they are wrong and wonderful.
When she hits heaven she doesn't call his name. She can't remember who she yelled for, but for a moment her aches are numb and she is content because she knew His name, even if it was only for a second. And he growls a name that isn't hers and she can't find it in herself to care because she knew. She knew.
But something registers deep down inside, and when he rolls off of her with a pant she suddenly knows who She is.
"There's a girl.. with that name.." She huffs out her thoughts as best she can because she's never done this before (but maybe she has, in a past life, or something like that, but she doesn't really believe in that kind of stuff) and she's tired and everywhere he touched freezes like Blizzaga inside. "A fairy. In my hometown. Radiant Garden.."
He stills beside her suddenly. She can feel his muscles twitch, feel his fingers grasp at something that might have been hope, feels the breath that he doesn't need to breathe hitch in his throat. He hesitates.
"It's okay. Go."
And he is gone.
She curls up tighter against the inner cold and she doesn't think that she's just lost her only connection to a past she never had, or that she's naked in the Underworld and who knows if Hades is a big voyeur or not, or that there could be Heartless and Nobodies just around the corner. She think just before she goes to sleep, at least he was nice enough to leave me his coat.
--
It's the ninth time she's seen him, and they are at Radiant Garden, and he looks content. She almost hates him again, but she doesn't because he was like her once. Lonely. She is silent when she hands him his coat (cleaned and folded and pine-fresh thanks to Aerith and her total anal-ness) and he is silent when he takes it, and She is not here right now but he has found Her and she is happy for him.
So she walks away and pretends that she isn't alone now and pretends that he hasn't ruined her life because he is not Him, but before him there never was a Him and it is his fault that now everything seems recycled by the Worlds. And maybe next time she sees him she'll ask Squ--Leon if there was
anything before Radiant Garden, before Hollow Bastion. And maybe now she'll wonder why every time she looks at Aerith her stomach clenches and she feels something tight in her chest.
But for now she laughs, because guess what? She cut off a piece of his coat and she has it in her fist. And she cut off a lock of her hair and stuffed it in his coat pocket. So she'll always have a piece of him and he'll always have a piece of her, even if he doesn't want it.
She goes to sleep that night thinking of the Him that he wasn't and the Her that she will never be, and it's okay because the game is over.
She dreams of red eyes and a man named Vincent.
(I should be doing something else.)