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Writer's woes:
Actually, this turned out much better than I thought. I changed a lot from the rough draft. When I started playing KHII again, I realized my diolouge for Fuu was all wrong. So...I fixed it.
Happy reading!
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Demyx rifled through the shelves in pursuit of the perfect present for Fuu's birthday. He wanted to impress her so much. But, nothing in this store, or any of the others he'd checked, for that matter, seemed right.
The problem was he didn't really know her. Silent and carefully meticulous observation of someone could only get you so far. The even more pathetic part was that it was blatantly obvious he was watching her.
Some days he trailed behind her, to hear her discuss things with her friends. He swore that when she flipped her head to look behind her, spreading her moonlight silver hair across her face, her ruby gaze flickered over him. She was the sort of person that looked at you straight in the eyes. This sent his eyes flinching nervously away, unable to connect more than momentarily with her piercing stare.
His "faintly stalker-ish" tendencies would have sent most girls dialing for the police at record breaking speeds, but she didn't seem to mind. Maybe she even liked him. All he knew was that she never appeared troubled by his presence, slinking clumsily just behind her.
Yesterday, he'd lost sight of her in the street. He looked around. Suddenly, he'd felt a tug on his sleeve. Demyx had jumped and nervously twitched his head around.
"Demyx?" A voice asked quietly.
Was that HER voice? She knew his name? The voices of a thousand angels had sung loudly in his ears. She knew his name!?
"Ummm, 'scuse. You there?" He had informed the angels that it might be best to shut up at that moment. Go take a coffee break or something, he mentally suggested.
"Wh-wha-what is it?" He'd replied, surprised that he had managed to utter a complete sentence in her presence without sounding completely like a blithering idiot.
"Uh, hi," Fuu had looked down at that point and shuffled her feet in what could have been an anxious manner. She had then chanced a quick look over her shoulder. "My birthday party. Saturday. You coming?" In a few rapid, jerky motions, she had pulled a piece of paper from her pocket and placed it in his hand. She had scanned the area, and then ran off with a rushed "'Bye!"
And that was the reason he was standing in the middle of a store, scouring the shelves and his brain for what could possibly be the perfect gift for Fuu. He was at his desperation point now.
"You've been here a while and haven't bought anything. Either you're real picky or you don't have a clue as to what you're gonna buy," the man at the cash register remarked. "So, what are you doing here? Window shoppin' indoors, or somethin'?"
Demyx stared silently at him. The only sound that could be heard was his shoes tapping against the floor as he bounced in place.
"Are you gonna answer? If you aren't, I may as well be wastin' my breath talkin' to a wall." It was odd how the man didn't sound quite rude to Demyx. It almost sounded like he seriously wanted to help him.
"Uhhh...I don't really know..." Demyx bounced a bit more, his feet violently smashing into the tiled floor.
"Why are you here?" He tried to help him. Demyx determined that if someone was going to attempt to help him, then he was going to try his hardest not to annoy them, or otherwise make their job harder in anyway.
"Well, this g-girl, ya see, she's having a birthday party and--" Demyx was cut off by the man.
"And you really want to impress her, but you have no idea what you should get her," the man finished wisely. "Right?"
Demyx could only nod. He twitched in place a bit more, thinking of what he should say.
"So, what do I do?" He finally asked.
"I'm guessing you don't know much about her. You might be good with, instead of buying something, maybe, trying to do something for her. Are you good at anythin'?"
Inspiration stuck Demyx like a lightning bolt.
"Thankyousir! 'Bye!" He called over his shoulder, heading for the door. Bells jingled, announcing his departure from the store.
Demyx ran, heading for the station. He hastily pulled the exact amount of munny he would need. He dashed up stairs, taking on three at a time.
"One ticket to the beach," he rushed, and, without hesitation, shoved the munny into the glass slot.
The woman handed him a ticket and he rushed into the building. He waited,
impatiently thumping his foot into the ground.
"All aboard!" The man shouted. As soon as he'd spoken, Demyx flew forward. He practically threw the ticket at him, and jumped inside the train.
"Hey, kid!" The short, tan man yelled out, as Demyx seated himself.
"Sorry," he called out the window, knees on the seat, fingers clutching the window frame.
He sat back down, as the train burst to life with a puff of steam and an earsplitting whistle. Demyx hummed to himself, releasing the melody that was filling his head. He'd never heard it before, but there was something to it. He kept humming it, over and over again, so it wouldn't fade away. That happened to some of the tunes that pulsed through his mind. They stayed a short while and then, as quickly as they popped into his head, slipped out, never to be heard again. Though, sometimes a song would come back to him after a while. He didn't want to risk losing the song, so he kept it alive. Every note another breath. He could not let it die.
It filled his consciousness. The world had slimmed rather quickly down to two; himself and his song.
The train halted to a stop. Demyx saw a flash of white sand and glittering water. He ran out as the doors were pulled open.
The beach past by him, as he headed for the high, rocky cliffs. He sat on a flat rock close to the edge.
As the ocean spray fell upon him, wetting his face, hair, and clothing. His hands snaked about the rocks around him. Demyx pulled out his beloved sitar and a notebook full of both blank and highly scribbled upon sheet music.
Demyx opened to a page that was crisply blank. He stretched out his legs and laid the notebook on his lap. He snatched a pencil out form the messy thicket that was his "finished" works. He was always going over them and adding something or fixing something that wasn't just right. He wrapped his arms around his sitar, slipping the pencil, for safekeeping, behind his ear. Then he was lost.
His brain was pouring the melody into his fingers, which fluttered over the strings of the sitar. Demyx wrote whatever the music dictated to him.
The song made him think of Fuu. Intense. Calm. Mysterious. Fuu was an unusual person. She only said as much as she needed to, and that was very little.
Time passed him by. He stayed there a long while, writing notes and playing them repeatedly. Darkness made fast work of the dying embers of sunlight. Demyx sighed, pushing himself up and picking up all of his things.
He usually left them in his secret hiding place, which was a small, hollow cavern in the rocks under him. The people he lived with weren't the most supportive of his musical tendencies. He decided that he didn't want to have to come back and retrieve his things later. The party was tommorrow.
OoOoOoO time skipOoOoOoO
Demyx walked through the door of the hall that the party was being held in, nervously clutching the body of his sitar with one arm, while his other hand strangled its neck.
"What d'ya have, for Fuu, y'know?" Asked Rai, a friend of Fuu's that Demyx had seen her often talk with.
"I was...uhhh...I wrote a song...and...I'm going to perform it," Demyx ended on a determined note. He was surprised at his recent ability to speak in the presence of human beings.
"I guess that's okay, y'know," the guy nodded. "I'll ask 'er if you can do that before she opens the presents." Then, he looked back and eyed Demyx suspisiously. "You'd betta be good, y'know."
Demyx nodded. "Thanks." He melted with relief. He'd thought that he might be able to play a song as a gift.
The party kicked off. Demyx wandered about, choking the life out of that poor sitar, which left painful impressions along his hand. Everything fuzzed and blurred in the form of flashing lights and pulsing beats.
After awhile the music stopped and regular lights replaced the neon flashes.
"Present time, y'know," Rai announced. Demyx felt a tap on his shoulder. "You're up, y'know." He reported. Rai pointed at the seat in the middle of the dance floor. "Play."
"Okay," he nervously picked his way through the crowd and sat down in the seat.
He looked around and saw Fuu seated at the table directly in front of him. The croud murmured amongst themselves, then silenced as they realized he was prepared to play.
Demyx gave no warning, no signal that he was to begin. He just did. He played gazing down at his sitar. When he finished, he glanced up to see the crowd's reaction and, most importantly, Fuu's.
Usually Fuu was never very impressed by anything, but from her face at the moment, looked like she'd actually enjoyed his proformance.
His audience was silent at first, but then they burst into laughter. Were they laughing at him?
He scanned the room. There wasn't anyone else to laugh at anywhere in sight. He sighed, telling himself he was the biggest idiot for thinking that they'd have another reaction.
He made for the exit. No one told him to come back, even as closed the door behind him.
It was sunset. Pastel yellows, reds, pinks, and purples were splattered all over his slice of the endless dome of sky.
He paced back and forth across the street. For some reason, Demyx didn't want to leave. He wondered why people laughed at him. He pondered fruitlessly over it for a moments, but then just stopped thinking. Walking back and forth. Back and forth.
"Sorry 'bout the morons." The voice nearly caused Demyx to jump out of his skin. He snapped around, facing the speaker.
"You listening?" She looked him square in the eyes.
"Have you come to laugh at me?" He looked down at his feet, dropping her stare.
"No. I came to say thanks," Fuu answered, pushing her moonshine hair out of her face. "Very rude to leave a gift an' run."
"Yeah, sorry..." He was pleasantly surprised by how much she was talking. He decided to look up again. There was a smile spread across her face. Demyx threw a pathetic one back.
"No worries. Don't care." She approatched him and gave him a small hug. He twitched, shocked.
"Did you like it?" Demyx asked. "The song?"
"Best gift." Fuu replied. "No better one there."
"Really, is that good?" Demyx's eyes shone with childish hope. She laughed. Usually, Demyx would consider laughter around him a bad thing, but for some reason he knew it was the good kind of laughter.
"Yes."
Her hair blew away from her eyes, and he was able to get a good look at her ruby irises.
"There's a better one." She mumbled, pushing her hair back into place.
"There is?" Demyx's pale eyes grew wide. "What is that?"
"Time." She looked at the sky.
"What's that mean?" He looked at her in confusion.
"Give people time." She looked at his face her eyes scanning his.
"Could you say that in more words?" Demyx asked. "It might make more sense."
"Always words." Fuu looked away from him again. "Do you need 'em?"
"Yeah...isn't that how you talk?" His eyebrows crummpled in thoughtfulness.
Fuu sighed. "Spend time with people. Shows 'em you care."
He pulled the words together and it made much more sense.
"Didn't think you spoke words?" She looked him over again.
"What did you think I spoke in?" He asked.
"Music." She pointed at his sitar, lying next to him on the ground.
"Oh." It was starting to come to Demyx. The way she saw things. It made sense.
"What do you speak in?"
"Don't know." She smiled a small smile, seeing that he understood.
"I could teach you words," he offered. In offering teaching, though, he realized that he did not know so much. "But I still have to learn. Could we learn together?"
"Yeah. 'Ud be nice."