It is a terrible day when the things we wish least to happen, happen.
Naminé sobbed.
Her entire body heaved, shoulders shaking and wretched cries being pulled from her small throat with an invisible fervor. Like her soul was being torn from her body. Like she had lost everything.
"Roxas," she whispered, voice raw. "Roxas. Take me back. Let me get it. I need it."
And likewise, nothing in the world brought him more profound pain than having to witness her crumbling in his arms, begging for him to turn around and give her something he could not.
"Listen to me. It's gone," he said, voice hard and almost wavering. "It burned in the fire. Even if I took you back there we couldn't do anything about that. Nothing can be done with ashes."
And he was right, and it made sense. She sobbed into her hands anyway, eyes finally unable to produce tears. There was nothing he could say that would make her feel better aside from lying to her, which he would not do; instead, for just a moment, he found an alleyway lined with decrepit bricks and rusting pipes and tall, tall walls and sat against it. He had been carrying her, and cradled her now instead, leather gloves squeaking as he held her tighter, tighter; like he could swallow her up somehow and keep her safe inside of him instead.
It was dark there. But she pushed her wet cheek against where his collarbone and neck peeked through the cloak, and breathed shakily, eyes squeezed tightly shut.
Then, a noise rattled from down the alley, and Roxas was on his feet and summoning a portal, not even glancing to see if he had imagined it as they disappeared into the darkness.
"But they were my ashes," she whispers.
Running is difficult.
Naminé's despondence settled neatly like a boulder on her back. Before, she had been sharp and always on his tail, always opening up the black doors before he knew they needed them. She didn't panic, didn't lose her temper, didn't lose her good sense. If he was a sword's blade, she was the gilded hilt. He could fight tooth and nail if need be, and would accept death if it came to it. But it was in his most acute moments of frustration and angst that Roxas could just look at her in all her light and glory, and suddenly see the world without red again.
Now, she moves weakly, and has not the heart to smile. She stares at unusual and beautiful colors they come across, fixating on them, and Roxas feels his chest trying to split open. His mournful ache short-circuits into anger. He smothers the flowers she looks at and snatches her hand, pulling her away to a different world.
She is slow. She is a burden.
He will sooner die a thousand deaths to a thousand blades than let her go.
Not a soul has found them in a week.
He can't figure out what world they're in; he had smelled something familiar and metallic that reeked and opened up more portals than he should have in a very small window of time. It had been dangerous and foolhardy, easily an opportunity for the tiny hands of nothingness to drown their souls in the nether, never to be remembered again, but they crash to the ground gasping for air and blink up at a clear blue sky.
Before them is a little forest copse, complete with a cottage settled neatly in the center clearing. It looks quiet and dead, and Roxas doesn't ask questions when he finds it furnished and clean and empty. There is not a trace of a presence in here.
No one has been here in a long while.
For the first time in ages, they eat and slow down. Naminé seems softer in her catatonia after that, and melts when he pulls her into the single bed in the one-room abode, wrapping the quilt around their depleted bodies and tucking her head under his chin.
It is quiet.
"It'll be okay," he says softly into her hair.
For the first time in ages, she nods.
They sleep, and dream of nothing.
When they are found, the smoke follows.
The acrid, thick smell permeates through every particle of air and absorbs into their lungs. Everything is on fire. Roxas had only woken because Naminé was speaking, and she was saying his name over and over in pleading whimpers with wide, glassy eyes that looked ready to break. Tears swam in them and reflected all the flames that licked and stretched their way.
He fumbles to wrench open a hole in the darkness for them to crawl through, but he succeeds and they find themselves standing on a vast shoreline. They are mesmerized by the sight. There is a thin line in the distance where the sky meets the ocean and nothing seems real. The clouds are massive in the heavens, lumpy and white with perfectly flat bases, and the sunlight is the color of Naminé's hair.
They smell like smoke.
Roxas, still vaguely disconnected and dumbstruck, turns to look at her. Naminé, blinking, looks back at him, takes his hand in her trembling one, and tugs.
"Come on," she says.
Walking into the sea feels right. Their clothes cling to them and makes them heavy, waterlogged, but Roxas eventually trips and brings Naminé down with him. Everything is blue, and tastes like salt, and when they come back up for air she's hugging him and laughing and he doesn't think she's okay yet but swings her around and hums anyway.
"Roxas?"
"Yeah?"
"Promise you'll never leave me?"
"Promise I'll never leave you."
"Really?"
"Really really."
"Everyone else left."
"I know. But I won't."
"How?"
"I'm not everyone else."
They find a classroom on a warm island, and six minutes pass before Naminé freezes and stares at the door like it's about to jump out and eat her. Roxas rips open a portal bitterly in an instant, but just as he pushes her through, his eye catches something on the desk beside him.
He reaches out and snatches it and the void closes behind them.
"Roxas?"
"I'm afraid."
"Of what?"
"That you're going to leave me soon. I don't want you to leave me. I'm tired of people leaving me."
"Naminé."
"Yes?"
"I couldn't leave you if I wanted to."
"...Promise?"
"Promise. I always promise."
They have this conversation more often than they ought to.
One evening, on a snowy mountaintop, they huddle in a tent with an oil lamp and sleeping bags and talk gently of what they'll do when nobody comes for them anymore. Roxas wants to go back to the beach. He could stay on a beach forever, probably, with all the warm sand and glittering turquoise water for miles and miles and miles. Naminé agrees, but only if there is a library, or at least a quiet place to sit.
Roxas agrees.
She asks him again if he's going to leave her. Her eyes seem to flatten every time she says the words, and she disappears from her own body. She's almost see-through, sometimes. He still hasn't figured out the way to tell her that she is the only reason he has kept going, and she is the only reason he will keep going, and if anything, he is the one who is morbidly and obsessively terrified of losing the one thing in his life that has been honest with him.
"Naminé, I will never, ever, ever, ever, ever leave you. Understand?"
She nods a little, smiles.
When night falls, they're frozen half to death. Roxas reaches out to hold her hand, and feels how her fingers are blue without even seeing them.
It's a tight fit, but she squeezes into his and they breathe together, a little uncomfortable but they're warmer and their hearts beat quicker. Neither can move without grazing the other.
She's still cold ten minutes later, though she insists she's fine. Roxas hates to do this, but he unzips his cloak and wraps it around her instead.
There is no universe in which he wants to see her wearing that cloak.
"Why does everyone always leave?"
"People leave eventually. They go their separate ways and lead different lives and that's just the way things are."
"But why do they leave me?"
"Only because they had to."
"That means you'll have to, too, won't you?"
"Nope. Never."
"Why not?"
"Because. You're stuck with me forever whether you like it or not. You're my best friend, Goldilocks."
Naminé's hands twist in front of her, and in an uncharacteristically brave moment, Roxas leans in and catches a curl of her hair, examining it. She's peeking up at him from under her lashes, eyes flitting from his gloved hand to his face to her hands and to his mouth. The train bumps along the tracks, and Roxas does not sit back yet.
"Roxas?" she says, mouth dry.
"Naminé," he replies evenly. His thumb drifts across the apple of her cheek, and one corner of his mouth quirks up without him noticing.
She doesn't know what to say to that; just opens her mouth, and closes it, and then sits very still.
But he does sit back eventually. And she thinks about how he is so safe and warm, and how she wishes she could crawl inside of him and sleep there forever.
She settles on tugging open his cloak and sliding her arms around him to lean her head against his chest. He still smells like brine and spices and something else she is in love with.
He had left for only a moment.
The little hotel room in the little town had lots of nice complementary things, as long as you went to get them. Naminé had woken from a nightmare she wouldn't speak of, and he decided that hot cocoa was perfectly acceptable in such a situation.
He opened the doors at the end of the hall, turned the corner, and watched as the innkeeper's head was lopped off of his body.
Roxas didn't move, didn't make a sound. His eyes mechanically attached to the hooded figure not unlike him that brandished their weapon, and the only thing that registered in his mind was it's not Axel and the sharpness of relief which followed.
They rushed at him in the next blink, metal meeting metal in harsh notes. The room was destroyed in a matter of moments, and Roxas found himself gasping for air as he swelled with panic that they had finally been caught up with. It had been so long, they had been ahead of the game for so long now, and he had almost believed that there was a future with a seaside cottage and a girl dressed in white.
Naminé.
The falter was minor, but more than enough. Roxas screamed as the blade tore through his left eye, lacerating straight down the pupil and blooming open at the cheek and eyebrow. His face was soaked with blood in a matter of seconds, staining crimson on his teeth and dribbling down his chin with drool as he snarled and bellowed and lost any sense of mind he had.
He couldn't remember what exactly happened or what it looked like, but in his palms, later, he could feel the pulsing and vibrating as his keyblade smashed into their skull. Their rib cage. Their clavicle. Their skull, once more, for good measure.
The door opened again. There was another figure in black to take the dead's place, but this time, he saw them flinch and take a step back as they were met with the horrific scene. He did not want it to be Axel, so he ran, and ran, and ran down the hallway until he burst into the room, scaring Naminé almost out of her skin.
He would never forget the sound she made when she saw him.
"We have to go. Now." His voice was gravel and wet and he spat a wad of blood onto the carpet. Naminé looked like a ghost and like her limbs were going to detach from her at any moment, but when he summoned a swirling portal and held out his hand to her, she only covered her mouth to quiet her sobs and did not hesitate to take it.
"Naminé," he says quietly, "If something happens to me, I need to know that you can escape."
"No," she cried sharply. "No. I won't. I can't. I won't leave you, Roxas. You're all I have left."
Roxas smiles weakly, trying to angle himself so she can't see the pulp of his eye, and rummages around in his bag briefly before pulling out something.
"You have this."
In his hands is a pack of crayons and a small pad of drawing paper. She stares at it like she's never seen anything like it in her life. It feels like an eternity before she reaches out, tentative, as if it's going to vanish, and gingerly takes the gift from him.
"Is this real?" she breathes out. There is a light in her eyes again. It was always there to begin with, he thinks; just maybe the lantern had been turned down. She is a light that never goes out.
"As the day is long," he quips back. If he had a heart, it would be swelling right now. Though in moments like this, when she is vulnerable and incandescently happy and golden, he thinks he must have a heart, because don't you need one of those to be in love?
"Where did you get this?"
"Oh, you know. Around."
She's too enraptured, clutching the drawing materials to her chest, to mind his vagueness.
"So. If something happens, you have that, alright?"
Naminé shakes her head the smallest bit. She smiles, but when she looks up, he sees shiny wet trails dripping down her cheeks.
"Of course not, silly," she says as if it is the most obvious thing in the world. "Even if you're gone, you're my only Roxas."
They cannot run for much longer.
The bleeding from his face has not yet stymied, and his vision swims in and out of incorrect shades and directions. He trips over nothing, and dry heaves, and his breathing is labored and raspy.
Strangely enough, Naminé is sniffling and her hands tremble like frostbite, but she is calm and steady. She doesn't mind getting his blood on her. When he looks lost, she says things that are so intimately sweet he thinks his poor heart can't take it much longer.
A little house on the beach, he thinks. A white cottage with paopu trees and golden sand and the sea.
Roxas is not ready when the figure appears. Naminé is startled by Roxas's cry, and there is a gaping wound suddenly going across his shoulder and draining blood violently. Even with the last of his strength he can't open a door to darkness, and he yells with anguish, desperate to summon his keyblade and take the Organization member down with him so at least she can escape. He would die for her a hundred times. But the keyblade does not come, and he does not find purchase in the Darkness.
Somehow, he is falling through it anyway, and it only when he catches the fragrance of Naminé's hair that he realizes dimly she has opened it herself and pulled him in with her.
The room is a disgustingly bright white and it hurts his eye.
He's making a mess, to be sure. There are droplets of dark red splattered and smeared across the pristine tile floor, and he can barely stand up.
"Roxas?"
Naminé.
There's something wet in his lungs. When he looks at her, she's the most beautiful, the most radiant thing he's ever seen, and it hurts him.
"Nami," he rasps, smiling. "Sorry."
She shakes her head. "Don't worry. I can fix this. I... I promise. You're never going to leave me, remember? You promised me that a million times, I think." She giggles softly. "You were too patient with me."
"No such thing," he exhales and counters. His feet drag, but he makes his way to her steadily, unaware of how her hands make strange movements and she keeps glancing to her right.
"You probably should have left me behind," she says, mostly to herself. "I must have been so heavy to carry all that time. You could've gotten away a long time ago if I hadn't been dragging you down, I bet."
"Light as a feather." And he half-collapses, hands clutching to her shoulders and forehead pressed down into the crook of her neck where it is dark and he feels safe. "You're sweet," he admits in a murmur.
"Roxas, I'm going to make things better now."
The words don't really make sense. He's more concerned with getting his hand to his mouth and tugging his glove off with his teeth, which he spits out onto the floor. Freed, his runs his fingertips down her arm, back up again, and laces it into her hair.
"I love you," he adds as an afterthought, but his throat is tight and he's not sure if she heard it or not.
Then she is withdrawing, and he feels a surge of anger, but it clears his head. Roxas finally becomes aware of the looming egg-shaped object that sits in the center of the room, elegant and intricate in its pale design. Something about it is enticing and frightening all at once, and he feels sleepy and energized.
With her hand in his, held tightly, he can't help but follow her as she leads him to the statue. Like petals, it blooms open, and Roxas is mesmerized by the sight.
"Climb in." Her voice is faint.
It's too late by the time he remembers.
Some gravity he can't identify swallows him up into the glass cage. The desire to sleep is overwhelming, immediately, like he hasn't slept in months and if he doesn't sleep right now he's going to go absolutely insane, but Roxas is rabid and desperate and he thinks his heart is breaking. It was plain as day to see now. If he hadn't had a heart in the first place, she had certainly put one inside of him when he wasn't looking.
"Naminé," he shouts through the pane, fists banging futilely against it. "Naminé! Let me out! Don't do this!"
He can see her standing there, even though she's blurry and should blend in with the room. But he can see her. Her eyes are blue and she is holding her drawing pad and crayons to her chest for dear life, and her shoulders jerk and fall like she's crying.
"Naminé," he begs. "Please. Don't... Don't..."
Her little knuckles turn white she's grabbing the paper so hard, and she doesn't even wipe at her eyes. She wants to watch him, every second, until he falls asleep.
"Naminé..."
The last thing he sees is her lips move and form words he cannot hear nor identify. His body slips away from the walls and drifts to the center where he will remain in orbit indefinitely.
And his eyes slide, slowly, peacefully, shut.
Naminé sits at a table with hollow insides, surrounded by crayons.
She draws a boy back together again.