Zexion really didn't remember much about before: screams and shadows and those broken pieces of existence that he tried to reassemble into…
Into what, Zexion didn't know back then, much less so now when all was lost. Maybe it was due to some psychedelic term: love, curiosity and variations thereof. Nothing real, nothing substancial. Fitting for a now-shadow who wasn't that real before. Although, maybe this trigger was real enough to have a push, and to leave an imprint when everything just took a leave.
Zexion tries, with minute, lifeless replicas of the crystalline shattered hearts. At times, they work. There is a not-quite boy practicing at life in the bleached castle, one of those fixed clones pulsating in his synthetic chest. There is a marionette, eyes closed and strings yet unattached, with another waiting for her, patiently beating off the days and hours.
But they aren't quite fixed, and they don't quite work. Illusions and manipulations work as intended, but the test subject is always complaining. His identity, his memories, why the other and not me. Zexion can't really be fazed by this – it's only another teenager through the existential crisis he's never seen – nothing he can do about it, but insinuate silence. It'll help you think, Zexion says, and the other is no great thinker. Maybe he is, Zexion doesn't care, but it's better than lashing out when the Replica feels wrong, and forgets that he is among those few who can't.
He can't feel, but he can pretend. There is some faded, spelled-wrong anger. There is this curiosity, tempered by having all the time and resources Zexion wants for his discoveries and the lack of thrills. There is a remnant of fear, and a scrap of what made a dead boy smile.
He's been out of the basements hunting out for a just-remembered treat. It isn't there, but there is another thespian waiting in the halls for her turn on scene.
An unstable star, flickering and fading white-on-white. Blues and yellow-cream struggle to make her constantly visible, and Zexion's fairly convinced she made an attempt at a blush when he found her turning a corner wearing a parody of fear like a fine garment. The rosy shade is one he can't remember ever seeing, and it startles him for a second, but it's quickly forgotten – she wears no cloak, she is no living being.
And finding out what she is isn't worth the risk of showing himself again, of waking up the spectral, quasi-emotional boy to a reality that he can't comprehend. Zexion can, but he chooses to leave without knowing more…
This has a phantom of a feeling attached, strong enough to echo and mirror itself on Zexion's face. The sensation of leaving something, something he wants-
But he can't feel, and dismisses this easily.
Here is the anomaly. It should have been an easy dismissal, but the plans are going eerily smooth and events are waiting for the dice to roll. So the haunting non-girl in living white has returned to his mind. It is peeving, it is an error – the case was closed back then, and it should be locked away and forgotten like those curled-up notes from last month's research.
But, apparently, the little void was as much of an exception to reality as he was. Maybe more – Zexion was at least wholly not real, his charade unaffected by the ever-present changes and flows. Because it all changed – there was smoke-blood on the floors by now, and there was less of a live humming to the wisp-metal walls. But not her, the girl with no name to her yet.
Replica's complaints have been back to haunt him again. It's now about a girl, hidden in plain sight, captured in a cliché and using colored-in drawings as poignant save me messages. Zexion intercepts one, turning the hastily drawn – or maybe intentionally poorly done – work around in gloved hands, catching the scent of crayon wax and inks, sensing the ridges and smooth planes of where they were traced. The figures are recognizable enough – both heroes, separated but wheeling together. She isn't there, not yet, but she is trying to make them bail her out.
Despite his better thoughts, Zexion takes up her call. Or assumes it can also be an invitation – he doesn't care, and she is of probably no threat.
She – Naminé – is a threat. But not to him, who has never interacted with the light-chosen key. At least, not directly, and her chains can't reach him there.
Her threat is that she is perfunctorily needy – a practiced damsel in distress, the essential captured maiden. Fallen lightning has cowed her well, making Naminé exceedingly courteous and unassuming. But the sly grins and thinly-veiled ersatz happiness send another picture – she is as much of an actress as they all are, and probably more aware of the cameras. But, for her, it all rides on exactly that.
She can be nice conversation when she drops the timid act though, barely requiring the tricks of speech that will mold her to something Zexion deems interesting enough for him. But he notices her hands shake at times, that guilt tangibly rings in the air, and he gets the hint that she truly is different, and that maybe an illusion-artist who mastered memory-wielding isn't what she wants to be. Or not be, as is the case here.
And it is fodder for his investigations – she is apparently open (or subservient) enough to accept his tricking around. A steady beat here, a flush face at times, a morphing world…
Zexion can't really alter the present, but he tries. Nothing can change an existing concept, but maybe an anomaly-void can.
It turns out that Naminé is bound to the past. She can't make it come alive again, only rewrite it and recode it to her (or someone else's) will. Replica knew this – surely, this was why he took keen interest in her – the past he doesn't truly have, Naminé can give. And it's better than no past at all, Zexion knows – to him, who barely had years as himself before running into the shadow's sickly sweet embrace.
But Naminé is of no use to him, who can only hope for a future or the rebirth of the past.
He still returns, after all is said and done and written down. Closure, Zexion thinks, and even the test subjects deserve to see their results. Replica just shoots at him dirty glares – not that he cares – as he's been doing per usual. It's nothing; Zexion wants to tell the porcelain soldier, she's not your girl really. She is no-one's and nothing, same as we all are.
But they both are in on the secret. She is, for now. Waves are for a while – they surge, leap, froth and fade. Shadows flicker and die. Two instants, a second there, the other gone. So there is no reason to chain her down to someone – Zexion is calculating when she'll return to a sea. But, for now while Naminé is, Zexion is there as well. Just for the research, and the almost normal conversations which can stray from the tactics he's usually thinking about.
It mostly doesn't work, because most of the maneuvers link back to her somehow. But she seems glad to see him again, and even remembers to say hello. Zexion quite likes that – she sings back his tunes quite well, and can take up mannerisms she's had no cause to see.
When they part, she always does something absurd though. Sees him out of the door, takes his hand for the grand total of a breath…
Today, it is her looping her arms around him, quiet and abnormally sure. Maybe it's her being an anomaly again; maybe it was the only constant there all along.
Zexion just can feel the warmth from that action long after he portals out.
It's showtime, but the rehearsal has long since been over. Zexion did see the stoic-looking actor take his bows in the dark, and ad lib at the end. To him, it's as empty as always – an early leave, a sign of failure and Zexion isn't one for them. But fight scenes have never been his forte – he's much more of a person for backstage details and clever dialogues.
Same as the girl off-scene, calmly practicing her next entrance and waiting for him to be back, because the latest conversation wasn't really over and she just elaborated the most intriguing argument this time.
Now, there is warmth close to his face, and Zexion won't say what she did – it's an actor's secret, and merely a trick of the light that is giving him an almost real appearance.
But almost-real isn't quite the same as reality, as a boy who should've been fooled easily can trace back all the woven illusions, and the double with the borrowed emotions can't wait to be a star.
Zexion leaves the stage, but not as he wanted, and not with a starling by his side. But he can't remember wanting that, or even processing half his thoughts at the end.
All that matters is that he won't be here anymore.
Naminé bounces back quite easily – it isn't as if her associates have managed to consistently pull through, and there is solace in that fact. She can fend off well enough alone…
But here was an exception. Make that two, or three, because an illusion of a man wasn't the only one who made her crave for someone by her side. But Zexion was the one that she remembered the most – willing, and she thinks it had less strings attached.
She takes special care so that, on the encore with a rookie named Roxas, what happened before in the white house doesn't get its reprise. He is no illusionist, and she's fairly sure that he's as genuine as her…
And there is this feeling she can't shake, that maybe she'll miss the white surroundings and the polite conversations over a book or the latest movements.
But she is now on scene, and those unbecoming to character won't show. Zexion taught her as much, and she fancies the thought of her mastery of his technique.
Funny, that she always thinks of 'his technique', even when he isn't here (with her, near her) anymore.
A.N. – this actually began as a song-fic in my head… go figure it morphed into this :) So, thanks for reading, and hope you liked it!