He sits on the platform, watching as she walks along the metal railing of the train tracks high above Twilight Town. One misstep could send her falling into the streets below, but she doesn't seem afraid, and it doesn't scare him so much anymore when she does it. He tried to stop her the first time, and she had just laughed and continued her balancing act on the steel bars. He's given up since then, but he's up in a shot if she so much as stumbles. It's strange, because if he thinks back far enough, he can remember a time when she would have listened with little argument. She had been like a princess that he could protect---delicate and beautiful.
Where did that princess go, he wonders? The maiden who sat in front of the sunset and wove necklaces from enameled shells in the sand...He remembers when he had fought to shield her from imaginary demons in their games as children and then when he had failed to save her from the real demons that had consumed their world. He thinks he'll never quite get over that feeling of having to protect her.
He's pulled his knees close to his chest, the black material of his coat pooled around his ankles. Teardrop tattoos lie beneath each ocean-colored eye, and his pale faced is framed by spiked-back hair the color of crimson flame. His hair is striking and admittedly odd, but it somehow manages to emphasize his beautiful face all the more for its idiosyncrasy. That same face can look startling and fierce when he wants it to be, but then it seemed tired and vulnerable.
At least that's what Kage might have said. Except she knows how proud he can be, and how easily that arrogant mask can be shattered, exposing a soul raw from hurt and self-hate.
Kage crosses back onto the walkway, her steps soundless on the concrete. He's almost asleep when her face above him jolts his mind back to wakefulness. She smiles down at him when he jerks and squints up at her. She pushes back her silver hair and stares down at him; her eyes are like glinting pools of amethyst.
"Tired?" she asks.
He hesitates, but then he finally shrugs.
"A little."
She kneels and sits beside him. It's chilly up so high in the town; all Kage is wearing is a white tank top and a black skirt, but she doesn't seem cold. She's twisting a strand of her bright hair around a slender finger, and then she abruptly stops, putting her hands in her lap.
"Mizu, what do you dream about?"
Her question sounded impulsive, but he can tell she's been thinking about it for a while and has only just then mustered the courage to ask him. It seemed harmless enough, yet his mouth suddenly feels dry.
"My dreams...?"
Kage nods earnestly, never taking her eyes off of him. Mizu curls deeper into his cloak, almost without realizing what he's doing. There's a spark of fear in his eyes that is gone in a moment like a dying ember.
When Mizu remembers his dreams, they are always about the ocean.
Kages catches his hand in hers, and she looks into his face. He feels frozen under her intense gaze. When he finally replies, his voice is husky, as if he's been shouting.
"I was drowning..."
Or some part of himself had been, caught beneath the waves of an aquamarine sea. He can still smell the salt, still feel the grit of the sand rolling beneath his feet in the water and against his hands and face.
"...I think...I was all alone..."
He's afraid of the ocean, more afraid than he'd ever admit to being. He shakes his head, his eyes tightly squeezed shut.
"I thought I had broken ties with that part of myself ages ago."
He's talking more to himself than to the girl beside him, and when he looks up again his eyes are like frozen flames.
"I hate the heart."
Each word is instilled with acid bitterness and cold fury.
"It's so easily consumed. I hate the darkness and the light that vie for power over the worlds and cause such pain," he continues quietly. "They say there's a difference, but both are really just the same. The soul that's left is forgotten...non-existent..."His eyes burn for a moment, but he stops the tears before they have even begun to form.
He never cried.
Kage is staring down at the floor. Without thinking, she's tracing a symbol on the concrete: a four-pointed star rising out of a shattered heart. The outline flickers for a moment in gray-white light before dissolving like smoke.
"Is the heart really such a bad thing?" she whispers.
Mizu's eyes flicker towards her face.
"What?"
"...never mind."
There's a silence. Kage wraps her arms across her chest as a strong wind blows across the platform.
"I guess...for a moment I wondered if we have been doing the right thing---fighting against the light and the darkness, in a world where we are practically forgotten and I'm not sure it even matters anymore. We are Nobody. We are non-existent."
Mizu laughs harshly.
"It's like that poem: I am Nobody, who are you? Are you a Nobody too?"
Kage winces.
"That was really bad, Mizu."
"I wasn't aiming to be funny."
Kage tilts her head towards Mizu, who's leaning back against the wall behind them with his eyes half-closed, and she frowns slightly in concern.
"You look exhausted."
Mizu shakes his head, but he looks unsteady in the movement.
"I'm fine."
"Of course you are," Kage says, a little sarcastically, but there's no mistaking the worry in her face.
"I wish you wouldn't try so hard."
Mizu doesn't answer. Kage watches the play of sunlight upon the bright stained glass and metal of the bell tower in the center of the town. If she squints, she can almost make out the shadows of the three figures perched in front of the main circle of colored-glass. The tips of her fingers are becoming numb from cold, and she tucks them beneath her legs to warm them.
When Mizu's head falls against her shoulder, she looks down at him for a moment in surprise but doesn't move. He really had been tired, and she couldn't bear waking him now.
Tentatively, she reaches out with her hand and smoothes back his mane of red-hair. She marvels at how innocent he looks in sleep. Like fire, his burning outer shell seemed to radiate power, but underneath he was as susceptible to pain as anyone else, if not more so. All at once she feels an aching guilt for all the sorrow he must have felt.
"I'm sorry. You blame the light and the darkness... and inside you must be blaming yourself. But...it's my fault too. I ignored you... I should have never picked sides, and I was too stupid to realize that until it was too late."
"Stupid, ditzy little Kairi. Princess Kairi who had to rely on everyone else to protect her...who ignored one of her best friends just because she had a little crush."
"I'm sorry...Riku."
It felt strange using the name now, but somehow it seemed only right to apologize using the name she had known as his all their childhood. For a moment she pretends that she is still the girl-child, the princess of heart that she once had been... but then she stops. It was laughable to think that a mere shell could ever be considered anything of heart.
###
Mizu awakens to find Kage asleep beside him. There is no way of telling how much time has passed---Twilight Town is perpetually locked in the dying rays of sunset. He is certain, however, that it's late and that Kage was sure to catch her death from cold if she stayed out so long.
He gazes at her serene face and, leaning down, briefly brushes his lips against hers in a chaste kiss.
~Are you still waiting for him?
He picks her up in his arms, holding her slender body close to his chest, and carries her home.
###
A/N:
I like the Nobody ^_^. It makes for a change of pace in the world of light and darkness, heart and heartless.