cornerstone; [she was nothing but a vision trick] please, may I call you her name?
namine/roxas/kairi
She was nothing but a vision trick, but the lighting was a flash—and the air was crisp and salty just like the ocean. Crazy like a pirate ship playing with the feisty waves.
Click-click-click.
There was a bob of red—auburn and sunshine striking—a knife through the mind. Oh, and oh it's so close. Oh, and it's a smoke alarm and his eyes are burning and his lips are stinging.
But she turns around, and now she's yellow, soft, and fragile. She's—the ghost. The ghost of her.
Her arm is so thin, a stick. She's a stick, a twig, but she hasn't broken yet, so maybe this is all just some game. A game.
Everything is a game here.
But, you see, this Roxas doesn't understand how he knows this hidden girl that he's never seen before. She's been a microchip implanted in his brain, and he can't scratch her out.
He tries. Oh, he tries, and tries and tries. He pulls his hair and fights for his life back, uncertain as to why he should. But he does, regardless of the government, of the Organization.
He blocks the voices in his head when he's out in the world, when he slices and kills what isn't exactly living. Sometimes, he thinks he's fighting for red hair.
So when he sees her—and her—he grabs her by the arm and swivels her with forceful need. The warning light makes her hair look like strawberry vanilla, and the breath that comes out of her smells like seagulls.
He feels his grip almost break her elbow by the look of her face.
And with his ragged eyes, he asks awfully politely, "Please."
Please, please, please.
"May I call you her name?"
The paper in her sketchbook rips, and it's funny because—
"No."
—it sounds like a heart.
"You can't."
And she has never looked stronger than now.
His grip is still solid mercury, but her hand rips out. She picks up her pencil that has fallen to the floor, and he watches her somebody show through.
He doesn't understand why he feels the need to destroy her, this two-faced girl stuck in this unrealistic setting.
But perhaps this is emotion he's feeling.
Maybe she is his life.
Maybe she thinks the same thing.