Done as a request: Namine and Antisora (not antiform) and pointless speculation about the latter in Oblivion: don't you notice he never turns up in Neverland? Spoilers for CoM and KH2, though not overt.
what little boys are made of
Namine does not know where the shadow came from, but in some ways, it's worse than the others: it never touches, just looks. Touch, at least, is something real, that can confirm that it's something that she can interact with, even if all it's going to do is intimidate her. Like this, it's difficult to tell whether it's a figment of her own imagination, a sign she's going mad--the endless hours spent over her sketchbooks, drawing out careful scenes only to smudge them into others finally taking their toll. Not that she isn't mad already, perhaps, to be playing games with someone else's memories. But in that, she doesn't have a choice.
So she tells herself, at any rate.
It doesn't make a lot of noise, but she supposes it comes from somewhere. She's seen it rising out of the walls and the floor, like a ghost. She pretends not to pay it any attention, but she can't help seeing it from the corner of her vision; fully in view, she decides it looks a little like Sora, at the same time that it surely does not. That is, unless Sora had ever dipped himself into tar and swapped his eyes for lightbulbs. The very idea is, of course, completely nonsensical, and she automatically places the blame for it on her exhaustion. She's not sure if it's a Heartless, although it looks like one; the closest parallel her mind can imagine is one of the Shadows, perhaps, that periodically wander into her room.
The Shadows never linger long, of course. They stay for a few moments at most and glance around her room, blank-eyed and unmindful of her presence. After all, Namine doesn't have a heart for them to consume. They usually shudder, melting away into the floor, as if they reject the starkness of so much paleness settled in one place. Namine never misses them.
This shade, however, lingers.
One day, frustrated both at her inability to focus and the fact that the red crayon she uses for Sora's pants has run out, Namine's hand snaps out, sending a stub of wax flying against the floor-- where a patch of darkness has just begun to rise in soft, familiar spikes.
The crayon bounces off and rolls away. Namine realizes she's holding her breath.
Slowly, a hand lifts out of the floor to cradle a head crowned with shadowy hair. Lamplight eyes almost appear to squint.
Ow, a dully surprised voice says, as raspy and faint as the rest of it, and that is how Namine learns that the shadow can speak.
Eventually Namine forms one of those things Vexen and Zexion like to call a hypothesis: that is to say, an educated guess.
Namine's hypothesis is that the shadow is one of Sora's memories too, though she isn't exactly sure which one. Somehow, the shadow is one of the things she hasn't finished unraveling in Sora's mind; as it lurks under her table, diplomatically passing her the crayons and the pieces of paper she sometimes drops with tendrils that peel away wetly from its limbs and hair, she can't help but wonder where it came from.
It still doesn't touch her, but the things it touches always feel a little bit oily afterwards. Still, Namine accepts its help gingerly, and always remembers to say thank you. She's not exactly how she's supposed to treat a memory that's wandering loose in the castle on its own-- if there's even any kind of etiquette that fits this situation-- but politeness is as good a course as any, she figures.
She can't exactly ask anyone else.
So far as she's managed to determine, no one else in the castle knows it's here: she has a nagging feeling that the shadow-Sora's probably escaped from one of the rooms Sora's been wheeling through, more and more of his memories left behind and stripped away for every door he opens. Somehow, this is one that has managed to avoid the same fate-- and now it's seeking shelter in her room, of all places.
Namine is surprised to find that the Organization members don't seem to notice its presence; if nothing else, at least Axel might comment on how tightly strung her nerves (if she had any, as Larxene likes to remind her) are.
Everyone, however, seems more occupied by the Keyblade Master's progress, and no one bothers to ask Namine why all the edges of her papers are stained with grease.
Sometimes, it speaks while she's drawing, but only when no one else is in the room.
It never makes any sense either. Sometimes she can hear it scuffling, off to the side, crooning to itself while it digs through her pile of discards. What it mutters varies-- broken rhymes, she's realized mostly, fragments of stories that it can't quite put together, as if it can't remember the order they're in.
She thinks she can understand that, a little. She's not certain about the order her story's in, either.
The end, it coos, half-melting into the floor in what Namine's learnt is a sign that it's happy. Happily ever after, once upon a time. Seven brothers left; riding on a pony.
She's better off ignoring it, really. It's only a distraction, and Marluxia doesn't like it when she's distracted. He's told her so. Emphatically.
The shadow manages to captivate her attention, anyway.
Hickory-dickory, pudding and pie; the more he saw, the less he spoke, it hisses, leaving streaks of dark matter across the paper as he paws through them fitfully. With my little eye, I saw him die.
"Who died?" Namine asks-- tired of his nonsense, and before she can think not to.
It startles, retreating from the papers with a sharp crackle as it sends papers flying away. It reels back and teeters, arms and shadow-vines flailing, until its balance finally tips and it appears to all but fall through the floor.
At this point, Namine can't quite say she's surprised, so she merely blinks.
After she's given up hope of it coming back today, it resurfaces, almost hesitantly--and for some reason, refuses to rise all the way from the floor, lingering shoulder-deep like a reluctant child.
Namine waits.
His heart died, it whispers to her, sibilant voice loud in the stillness, and suddenly she doesn't think he's talking about Sora. That seems to be all it's willing to say. Shadow-like coils ripple suddenly across its form in sinuous, twisting patterns, until Namine has to look away.
By the time she looks back, it's no longer there.
The next time she sees it, it's with the added insight that instilling the Replica with Riku's memories has given her--and with the knowledge that's she's no longer bound to the castle. There's a red-clad stranger who is a brisk, terse presence that doesn't quite stay by her side. Mostly he keeps ahead of her, clearing the way of the Heartless that linger in the corridors. Namine clutches her sketchbook tightly to her chest as they make their way backwards through the castle, her new guardian grumbling about mouse-kings and impractical decisions all the way through. He only glances back long enough to make sure she's following him still.
When she sees the shadow, they're toiling through a half-shattered version of Wonderland, and it's dancing on the Queen of Hearts's throne.
Ob-li-vi-on is falling down... falling down... falling down...
The shadow's rasping voice see-saws crazily through a mangled version of a nursery rhyme, in time with the awkward flip and flop of his feet. It stops when it sees her watching; Namine hears a grunt behind her and knows that the man in red leather's too occupied to pay her any attention, so she decides to speak.
"You're one of Sora's memories, you know," she says. "You're not supposed to be here."
It might be smirking at her. She can't tell. It does, however, perform a mocking little jig on the cushions, moving with more elastic grace than the real Sora ever could, and tips an invisible hat at her jauntily.
Namine says, as sincerely as she can, "Good-bye." And belatedly, "Thank you for..." ...Helping her undo Sora's memories? Suddenly, she's uncertain she should be grateful at all.
This time she can tell it does grin, because the eyes dim faintly, sliding half-shut.
Before she can think of a way to amend that particular faux pas, she's being taken roughly by the arm and hurried away, and the last thing she sees is a single wisp of shadow waving at her in farewell.
In Twilight Town, it is one of the memories she hesitates over, the one she isn't really sure should go back-- there are many memories like that, which she sometimes worries Sora would do better without. Memories of betrayal, and sorrow, and loss.
But DiZ insists that everything, and that means everything, must be put back in order, so Namine picks up her black crayon to draw something that isn't, for once, an Organization member's coat.
She draws him wispy and insubstantial, like she remembers him, smoke and grease and darkness. Darkness trails off him like the tatters of clothes he's grown out of.
His eyes are two pinpoints of yellow, drawn on top of the black with hard fast jabs, and Namine leans back to look at him for a moment, surveying the work that she's done. Satisfied with what she sees, she folds her hands over the paper and wills.
When she lifts her palms away, nothing's left but a smudge of yellow on the sheet.
Later, much later, Namine is watching Sora fight through Kairi's eyes, and she watches--
Blueandredandwhiteandbrowntoblack.
--and Kairi jerks, involuntarily. Sora looks at her with lamp-wick eyes in a face that's all shadows, grinning apologetically.
"Sorry," Sora says, shrugging in something that's probably embarrassment. He doesn't hiss, doesn't rhyme, doesn't slide into the shadows-- just puts one hand behind his head and scratches awkwardly, still the Keyblade Master even under the oily slick of Darkness.
"It just... kinda happens like that."