Disclaimer- I don't own Kingdom Hearts.
She hates how he watches her, like he knows her innermost secrets
(her sins)
splayed out on her pretty white dress, staining it blacker than black. He's a blot of color in her perfect little white world and she wants him gone. She peeks at him beneath eyelashes and bangs, splayed on one of her little girl chairs, watching.
His eyes are subtle, she notes, and yet blaringly cold. Sometimes they seem almost aquamarine but now their apple green search lights. Staring, staring...
"You look like her."
She jerks up, icy and defiant. "Excuse me?"
He cocks his head, leafing through a few scattered drawings indifferently. "You look just like her. Just like Kairi." His expression is guarded as he leafs through them, dropping them carelessly and watching the fragile leaflets of paper drift to the floor. "What did you do to her?"
Namine frowns at her sketchbook pulling her knees neatly up between him and her. "I don't know what your-"
His fist pounds the table and she jumps sending her sketchbook flying, glittering pages of revealing flashes of red and blond and smiling boys and girls and....
"What did you do to her?" His voice is calm. His eyes aren't. They dare her to lie, and she's afraid that even she is forgetting the truth.
"I'm not sure I understand..." she whispers, teeth clamping down on her words. Liar. Lieslieslies. Can he see them? Taste them, smell them?
His hand tilts her chin up, and she squeaks because she didn't hear him move. "Don't lie to me. What did you do to her."
Pearl teeth bite into her lip and dead skin. "She's fine. I haven't touched her" A faint ironic smile. "I've actually never seen her. I just began erasing her from...memories. I..." She feels her eyes tearing up and bites harder, drawing blood to her tongue, salty and metallic. She glares at him, cold as his silver hair...as his eyes. "What do you care. You...She loves him. She loves loves loves him. Not you. Him." She hates this girl. This reflection of herself. She has everything...everything. She has everything and Namine doesn't so she lies and spits the poison in his face.
He lets her go... fingers clenching and unclenching and suddennly he's spinning, kicking her chair into a wall where it smashes into splinters. "Dammit!"
She inches backwards towards her abandoned sketchbook, folding the crumpled pages back slowly.
"You look just like her."
She glares at the broken winged book and sighs. "I know."
She's not surprised to look up and find him gone.
She's not sure of the time but one moment the she's alone and the next he's there, poking the broken chair with his foot. "It's still here" he remarks slowly.
She nods. "I'm alone again. They're all gone...it's just me now."
He settles on the table. "I'm sorry." She accepts the apology with a another nod, but she's not sure what he's apologizing for.
"You...saved me."
She shrugs, slow and uncertain, her pencil hovering over the page, uncertain. "You already said your thanks."
He shrugs. "I know...but I wanted to believe it was her. I knew it was you, but..."
She eyes him. "How did you...?
"You smell different."
They sit their in silence for awhile, and then she hears him shift, and jerks up. He's halfway out the door, and she feels herself cry out. "Wait." He glances back, and she shifts awkwardly, forcing herself to face him instead of the sketchbook. "What do I smell like?"
He arches an eyebrow, and leans on the door frame. "Kairi," he began uncertainly, the memory on the tip of his tongue. "Kairi smelled like sunshine and rain and flowers. You smell like books and paper and dust." He watches her coolly, and stretches, turning away. "Of things best left forgotten."
Everything begins with Kairi, and that's what Namine hates most of all.
She's staring out the window when he reappears again.
"I had to kill a reflection of myself before I met you."
She purses her lips. "Oh?"
He leans against a nearby wall and watches her. "You forgot him didn't you? You where so obsessed with Sora that you forgot your own sick creation. You understand fakery, and yet you left him floundering. You abandoned him."
Her eyes sting with unspilled tears. "I am not fake" she grinds out, the sickness in her stomach rising. She had forgotten Repliku. He was fakefakefake and so was she. Namine let herself fall, forehead pressed to the glass, eyes clenched shut, choking on the bitter sorrow.
"Do you remember?" he asks, and it's so soft and kind that her guard falls and a sob tears loose. She nods, slowly, afraid if she moves to quickly that the she'll scream so loud the world will shatter.
His hand clenches her shoulder, and it's forgiveness of a sort. "Good. Don't ever forget."
And suddenly she's crying pathetically and he's holding her, stiff and distant understanding but he's there. "I...I'm a reflection too" she whispers and her stomach lurches as he nods.
"I know."
Another sob breaks her throat, and she manages to choke out the next couple of words before the empty cries begin again. "I don't want to die."
He simply detaches himself and walks away, and she hates him a little for that.
She's repainting the walls again, smearing white paint onto white paint with a vigor unseen before. And suddenly he's there, nose wrinkled at the sickly sweet smell. "I'm leaving today. I'm going to help Sora."
She dips the paintbrush in the can and pretends her hands arn't shaking. "I thought you didn't want to see Sora, at least before you had control of the darkness."
He smiles wanley. "He won't see. I'll be sure to stay on the sidelines. I'm just sick...of being trapped here." He watches her for a moment. "How can you..." He stops, caught in the sudden flash freeze coolness of her stare.
"I'm happy here."
And suddenly he's laughing, and it's cold cruel laughter, but it's something she's never seen before so she watches.
"Your...happy here?" He shakes his head, and wags his finger at her. "What did I say about lying."
Dully, she notices, he doesn't ask her to come with, and as he leaves the room, she finds she can't bear to ask.
She blames the stray tears on the paint fumes and abandons her cause.
The shouts echo across the castle and Namine holds her breath and counts to ten, prays to god, and pushes her doors wide.
Somehow, she recognizes Riku in the body that isn't his; too tall and too strong and too dark. He stares at her, yellow eyes wide and she resists the urge to cringe. There's a blond boy at his feet, and shards of glass all around him. She doesn't look to see what he's broken, he in himself is broken and that is enough.
"Riku?"
Riku collapses, pushing the blond boy aside, and Namine glances at him, and her heart sings. Remnant boy. Pieces of a whole. A fake. Fakefakefakefake. But he is sleeping, and despite her sudden new found kinship, his suffering is unimportant. Sleep bars the suffering and Riku is wide eyed and screaming. She moves forward and clenches Riku's nobody cloak in tiny girlish hands.
"Riku please...what happened? I..."
He twists, and his face is wild with fear. "He can't see me like this. He can't he can't he can't..."
(she can't.)
"It's okay" she whispers, letting him cry in her little girl dress. "It'll be okay." He sobs and she smiles because Riku may not be a nobody, but he's a monster.
Monsterboy. And Monster's get locked away, and then he won't leave. Ever. Forever and ever and after. He'll have to stay with her in the dungeons and he'll never ever leave her.
"It's okay."
The blond boy lies in her bed, fitting perfectly, the little blond boy with the little blond girl. Perfect. She pats his cheek, brushes back his bangs and smiles. "You, are like me. We are pieces, two halves but maybe we can be whole together, like puzzle pieces. Two wrongs don't make a right, but maybe two fakes make you real. Maybe maybe.
"You will always be fake."
She turns, and Riku's in the doorway, arrogant and cold and she snaps, because Riku is cold and she wants to burn him up, break the ice that holds his features together and watch it shatter. "And your a monster! Does that make you better? Being fake makes you unreal but monsters are all to real and your a monster and you'll never be good enough for her." She breathes in hard, and bites her lip, tears springing to too-blue eyes. "She's there and I'm here, and aren't I good enough?" She stumbles forward and hits him, the hollow fleshy thump echoing in her ears. "Huh? Am I good enough?"
He stares at her, and she's not sure if he is blank as an easel or if this new Riku is just emotionless on the outside. She's not sure what to do so she just stands and waits and waits.
"You look just like her."
And maybe he's just that heartless, or maybe he's just as lonley as she is, but he kisses her and she clenches his coat and hangs on. He loves me he loves me not. The daisy petals part and she already knows the answer. He lets her go, and she smiles faintly, eyes still tearing but she won't let them spill. "Thankyou."
He walks away.
She wakes up on the floor cause the fake-boy's in her bed, and Riku's shaking her awake. "You've got to go." He's repeating it over and over, quiet and stern. "You've got to go. You've got to go. Go. Get out of here. Namine, you've got to..."
"Huh?" Sleep makes her dim and her head feels heavy. "Leave me alone Riku."
He shushes her, quietly. "DiZ wants me to get rid of you." Immediately, she sits up, eyes wide. "Wha-why? What did I do?" She stares at Riku, horrified, and he smiles faintly.
"Come on."
"Where are we going?" He pulls her to her feet, and she snatches for her sketchpad and pencils, pulling drawings off the walls and floors as they go. "Riku, please...I-"
"I can't kill you." He sighs, and rubs the back of his neck awkwardly, a remnant of a boy who doesn't belong in a man's body. "I'm gonna get you out of here."
She freezes, than nods, firm and resolute. "Okay."
He grins, and the smile is of the boy, not of the man he has become, and yet someone it fits. She stands on tip-toe and kisses the top of his shoulder because even when he's crouched beside her bent in half, it's the highest point she can reach. He kisses her forehead and opens the portal and she stares into the unyielding darkness. "Riku, I'm scared."
He nods. "I know but we don't have time for that. Go." He prods her forward and she touches the churning black and purple, stepping forward into the darkness. She glances back and he waves, and she suddenly finds herself speaking, turning to face his fading form. "I'm not her, you know? Please tell me this isn't because I look like her. It isn't, is it?"
He says something but the portal closes and the words are to garbled for her to make out. She thinks that might be a blessing as well as a curse.
Kairi cups her hands over her mouth and cheers while the boys continue their tournament. She catches the glint of her necklace wrapped around Riku's wrist as he bludgeons Sora heartlessly. She frowns to herself muling over his words even as she claps.
"And where is your token? I am your knight after all?"
He was joking. Riku always joked, it was Sora who constantly confessed his undying love to her. Maybe he wasn't joking this time. Maybe...
She ignored the slight fluttery feeling in her chest. Maybe she'd sprout wings right now and fly away. Riku didn't love...
He loves you.
Kairi visibly twitched, looking around frantically for the voice.
Loves you lots.
"Oh" she whispered, rather startled. It's in my head. Most people would have been rather frightened, but Kairi took it in stride. In fact, the voice sounded rather familiar, as if it was part of her. She'd heard it once before. She smiled to herself, and traced a name in the sand. Namine.
"You better be telling the truth" she told herself sternly, hoping somehow the remnant of a girl would hear her. Her eyes flicked up as Riku's blow knocked Sora aside, sending him flying into a dune. Selphie darted forward, clapping manically as she raised Riku's right arm. "Winner!"
Kairi cheered loudest of all.
And somewhere inside her, Namine smiled.