Ice Sculpture
One shot, Replica-centric. Your heart is an ice sculpture, all reflection and none of yourself, and you don't want to be broken anymore. (and now the snowflakes are melting)
A/N: What? You thought I was done with second-person? You fools.
As for an explanation for this one-shot, we had a snow day (yes, a snow day in the bloody middle of April, shut up), I was listening to AFI's "Love Like Winter", and I had spent the entire day watching Reverse/Rebirth cutscenes on KH-Vids. Mix well. Boom. One-shot. Serve cold with dessert wine, feeds twelve.
Disclaimer: No belongy me.
Drifting.
The quiet sound of nothing is all around you.
You...?
xxx
It's funny.
You've never known there was a you before.
xxx
Still drifting.
There is quiet inside you, and quiet around you, but—
The quiet is different now.
Suddenly there is emptiness rushing down over you, pushing away the...the...
(there is no word?)
and your lungs are suddenly flushed of the—something—and filled with...well, not filled with nothing, but a different something, and a word you've never known fills in what this is—
(breathing)
—and suddenly you are not drifting anymore. You are...
What are you?
A disjointed thought shoots through your consciousness, one that makes no sense—
Is this what being born is like?
XxXxX
The first thing you see: Green eyes, clear and cold and calculating, that look you over appraisingly.
The first thing you hear: Silence—not the quiet of drifting, but a silence that stalks like a predator, leering at you and daring you to break it.
The first thing you taste: The sharp, bitter tang of your own fear and confusion.
The first thing you smell: The clean, crisp scent of icy air and chill water that drips off you and seeps into the cracks in the floor.
The first thing you feel:
Cold.
xxx
You never wonder why it is always so cold. It was cold in the drifting, and it is cold in the air as well. You've never known any other state of being. The green-eyed man—the one to whom, you learn, you owe your existence—is a master of ice, and so it is logical to think of yourself as a creature of ice as well.
Your heart is ice. Your being is ice. You are cold inside and out.
That's just what existing is like.
XxXxX
Vexen—
—the creator—
—has something to tell you.
You are not really a human being at all.
Your heart is fake, created in the likeness of another. Your skills and thought patterns—even your physical appearance!—all copied from another individual.
All his.
Not yours.
But how?
Vexen is adamant. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter! You are better. You are improved. He created you not with aimless hopes and a weak heart, but with purpose, with a place, with strength, and none of these silly wonderings and weaknesses and frailties and failings that ordinary humans have.
You are better. You are superior.
This comforts you...a little.
But hairline cracks have appeared in the ice of your heart.
xxx
The day has come. You are ready.
Vexen is letting you meet the Real Thing.
Your job is simple: find him, beat him into submission, and drag him back to Vexen. Apparently, his heart—weak and inferior to yours though it may be—is of interest to Vexen. You don't care. Any way you get to prove that you are yourself, and not simply his copy, is fine by you.
When you see him, even you (who are expecting it) are startled at how much he looks exactly like you. He has the same height, same weight, same build, the same tidal-wave eyes and hair like starlight captured in glaciers. He wears an expression of shock and confusion, a look that changes simply to blank disbelief when you relate to him the barest minimum of your story.
And you discover that he is afraid of the darkness.
How pathetic! The darkness is as much an intrinsic part of yourself as the cold is—it is all you have known. To have the power, yet to reject it? To fear it?
Weak. An unacceptable weakness.
This is going to be easy.
xxx
He defeats you.
Easily.
xxx
Well, it's obvious how he did it—he cheated. He's simply older, and just a little more experienced, plus he has the advantage of knowing how you fight, and changing his style to anticipate what's coming. You're still more powerful. You don't have to worry about the darkness in your heart because it's safely frozen into the ice that is part of yourself. You fight with the darkness because it is part of you.
It's what you were created for.
Still...
He beat you.
And weakness is not acceptable.
XxXxX
There is a girl in the castle. Her name is Naminé. When you see her, you feel—
You're not sure what you feel.
But it isn't cold...and that scares you a little.
You hadn't known that something could be this right and not be cold. It just isn't...
...normal.
xxx
They want you. What for, you don't know. When you find them, you see that Vexen is there, and Naminé and two others like Vexen that you haven't met before.
Once you are there, they continue to talk like you aren't there—which irritates you. You catch Naminé's eye and shrug, as if to say, Well, what are you gonna do?
She flinches, and looks away. That's when you know something bad is going to happen.
xxx
—What?
The blonde woman has revealed what they want you for—they want to remake your heart to be exactly like Real Thing's. That's crazy! You are better than he is! He is weak—why would they need that weakness in you?
You don't want to be him.
You want to be you.
You appeal to Vexen. Surely he sees that this is crazy—surely he knows that he created you not to be weak. He'll put a stop to it.
No.
He wants to see what will happen.
He says it must be done.
And you see, for the first time, what you truly are to him: a lab rat. An animal. Not really a being at all.
The blonde woman overpowers you, and all you know is black-jagged-lightning fear and horror until the world melts and crumbles around you...
xxx
You are a creature of darkness and ice.
The chains of your memory—short though they are—you know well and perfectly. Clear as crystal, you remember everything that has ever happened to you without flaw. You treasure them because these memories are all that you have to call your own.
But they, like you, are ice, too.
And ice breaks.
Easily.
XxXxX
Memories of you, frozen in ice:
A boy.
An island.
A night of shooting stars, and a promise.
Smiles. Laughter. Naminé. Sora. Light. Warmth.
No cold. No darkness. Just you.
A part of you asks, But without those, what am I? What?What?...
That part of you cries out in protest, until it, too, is frozen in ice, silenced in mid-scream.
xxx
Sora angers you. How can he not see that you're fine without him? Why can't he ever just leave you alone? He just can't accept the fact that you've moved on. He's never trusted you to take care of yourself. He's never understood you.
(he's never met you)
You promised to take care of Naminé, and that's exactly what you're going to do, and if that entails forcing Sora to back off, you can do that. She's angry with Sora, and if Naminé doesn't want to see him, you aren't going to let him hurt her.
You're going to make whatever's hurting her go away.
You promised.
But no matter what, Sora just keeps persisting. He tries to remind you of all the people you left at home—
(home? people?)
—but you don't care about them. They aren't real to you anymore,
(were they ever?)
more like pale ghostly reels of tape, more like something you were told about once, more like...
(images in ice?)
—yes, that's it. Naminé is the only one that seems real now. Her, and the promise you made to her. The exact memory of that night is a little
fake?
hazy, as well, but you know it's real. You have the charm she gave you, right?
You tell Sora this, to convince him to leave, to show him the depth of your conviction. But—
How does he know?—
He has the charm, too???
Suddenly, everything doesn't make sense. Suddenly, you want to just...stop, and...figure this out—
(your screams melt the ice, only to be refrozen, helplessly trapped inside so you can't see the truth of what you are)
—no. No. Your heart has reminded you of your true purpose. Sora must be lying; he must be, because you are the one who made that promise to Naminé! He's wrong! He's lying! He is...
...fake.
You suddenly want to destroy that false charm. He lied! You know he lied! Naminé is there, and you can see that she is hurting, and it's all his fault! You—
(the ice fractures)
—what?—
(blue eyes crush the ice with you still inside)
You shatter.
xxx
Your heart is ice.
Ice breaks.
Easily.
xxx
In the shattered pieces of your heart, you see yourself reflected over and over. With every one, you see more and more that something isn't right.
Because you remember now that it isn't you that you see.
It's him.
Every shard of your heart reflects his face back to you, and you see that all you are is this—
Ice. Reflection. A mirror for someone else.
Not yourself.
None of you is you, because the ice can't reflect itself.
And that's all you are.
And that's all you were.
And that's all you ever can be.
xxx
Even now, now that you know the truth of what you are, you still vow to protect Naminé. She's all you have left, and it's the only thing you can do to pretend at having any kind of purpose beyond existence, and she's the only one you remember who could make you feel that feeling, the one that wasn't cold. But then you remember that it was she who trapped you within your own ice, and the moment of uncold you felt for her passes, and you and she can see that it won't come back again.
Sora tries to comfort you, and you are truly touched that he can regard you as a peer, an equal, knowing even that you are a fake, a fabrication, and not his best friend, but he doesn't understand what it's like to hold the pieces of an icy shattered heart together until they refreeze into something like your former self. He doesn't know what it's like to see yourself-not-you reflected over and over into the infinite black void.
He doesn't know. He can't know.
But you know.
And you know you're not going to take it any longer.
XxXxX
When you see him again, you see a kindred spirit. In the set of his shoulders, the way he holds himself, the newfound weariness and disillusionment you see in his eyes when he sees you and doesn't flinch away, you know that he has suffered. He is no longer afraid of the darkness—he has learned that it is not darkness that is evil, but people—those who abuse it, hold it close and refuse to let their own pain go. Perhaps he was once such a person. Perhaps that's why he feared it in the first place.
Perhaps, like you, he is broken, too.
You hate him suddenly for that. What right has he to know pain like yours? What right has he to understand? What right has he to once again keep you from being different from himself?
Maybe he can understand you.
Maybe you can forgive him.
But you don't want to.
xxx
Of course you put up a fight. Of course he does, too. You are equally talented, equally strong, equally torn by pain and rage and fear so that the only way for the fight to end is for one of you to fall.
And you discover something:
You are nothing alike.
You can only ever hope to be a pale imitation of him, like an ice sculpture of a real person.
Because his heart burns with fire
You are ice.
Fire beats ice.
Every time.
XxXxX
So you are melting before him, and he knows it. Your thoughts drip down the sides of your skull in clear streams, lucid when they come, but passing without leaving a trace. Just as you will pass from this world. You wonder...
Where will you go?
He answers that wherever you go when you die will probably be where he goes. Where anyone goes.
A pair of liquid drops glisten on his cheeks, and you vaguely wonder if he is melting, too.
xxx
A memory returns to you, floating up from the melting ice:
A memory of drifting.
Of serenity. Of peace.
Of not having to worry who you are anymore.
Dying is cold, but it's okay. You welcome the cold.
So you drift away.