Egg Whites
::slight Soriku, almost invisible onesided Namiku:: She explained life to him through the egg on the table in the corner and the desk lamp that cast frightening shadows on their sham of an existence. Pre-KH2
AN:: the Soriku's like barely there, and the Namiku's even less visible. But hopefully you'll enjoy anyway.
In this fic, I'm going with the idea that Riku can probably kind of see through his blindfold. If he needs to get a better look at something, he peeks out from under it.
Riku spent a lot of time in the white room upstairs.
He couldn't bear to watch Roxas on the screens, watching as he lived out what should have been Sora's life, what was Sora's life. He couldn't bear to watch because Roxas was some form of monstrosity that shouldn'tve existed, he was a sham, he wasn't real. And he couldn't stand to watch the fake existence that flitted across DiZ's screens.
He hated checking Sora's progress, because watching the friend that he had worked so hard to protect in the half dead half alive state that was Namine's semi-eternal (or at least it felt that way) sleep hurt his heart in a way he couldn't explain. Because all he had wanted was for Sora to be safe, but in the end he hadn't tried hard enough to protect him, he had hurt him, and Sora could have died and it was all his fault because he was a stupid brainless idiot who couldn't keep his friends safe like he should.
The library held no interest to him because it was only filled with DiZ's books on the darkness of the heart and his reports, and Riku practically had all that memorized anyway. Besides, who knew the effects of darkness on the heart better than Riku himself? (except for maybe Ansem and the Organization).
So he spent a lot of time in the white room upstairs. He didn't particularly like or dislike Namine, but he guesed if he had to pick her or DiZ, she was monumentally better company. So he would sit with her at the long table, and watch as she drew out the lives of those around him and tacked them to the plain, empty walls.
It was interesting, really, the way she could create the existences of those around her. And it was amazing, the way she helped Sora.
He only wished he could do the same.
He told her that one day.
"I think I'm jealous of you," he began, gazing at her from behind his blindfold at the other end of the table.
"And why would that be?" she questioned, not even looking up from the sketchpad in her lap.
"Because you're helping Sora. And I'm sitting here doing nothing. All I ever wanted was to protect him, and I can't even do that!" He exclaimed, ducking his head shamefully.
She looked up at his outburst, her cerulean eyes so like Sora and Kairi's that he couldn't meet them.
"You've helped him too," she said softly, still gazing at him. He shook his head, slamming his palms into the table.
"No, I've never done a damn thing for him! I've tried and I've tried, and all I've ever wanted was to keep him safe and I couldn't even do that! He's the light, and I'm just his stupid shadow. The only thing I'm good for is messing him up!" Namine stood suddenly, placing her half finished sketch on the table and walking briskly over to him. She suddenly grabbed his hand and laced his fingers through her own, and half dragged him out of his seat, pulling him over to a drawing desk that was set up in the corner of the room.
Riku had often noticed this desk when he circled the room to look at the drawings she had already completed. In front of it was a table that was pushed into the corner in front of one of the only blank spaces of wall in the room. The table housed a single white egg and a desk lamp. On the drawing desk sat a sketch pad. He had often wondered what it was for, because Namine usually drew people and he had never seen her use the set up before. Once, when he asked, she had just responded 'technique' and gone back to her sketch.
Now, Namine sat him at the drawing desk and flicked on the desk lamp, positioning it at an angle that caused the egg to cast a long shadow on the table. She pointed at the shadow in question.
"Light always casts a shadow," she said quietly, dropping Riku's hand. "Do you understand?"
He stared at the egg for a long moment.
"Yeah," he said quietly, peeking out from under his blindfold to get a better look, "I think I do."
After that incident, Riku started talking to Namine quite a bit more. She would usually just hum or nod in response, but he found that she was a surprisingly good listener. And she often had very good insight too.
One day he broached the topic of the darkness of his heart.
"I feel like I'm a terrible person, especially in comparison to Sora. I've hurt my friends, I destroyed my home, and I almost caused the destruction of the universe. And then Sora had to go around and clean everything up," she stands again and pulls him back over to the desk in the corner, motioning for him to sit. She turns the lamp on and once she positions it properly, she points to the area behind the egg.
"If you squint at the egg and the background, can you tell me where the background looks darkest?" she asks, looking at him expectantly. He picks up his blindfold a bit and after casting her a withering look, he sighs and squints at the egg.
"Right next to the lightest spot," he says softly, a bit of understanding showing in his aquamarine eyes. She nods.
"The backgrounds actually one color—if you took the egg away," she says, swiftly picking up the egg, "It would be a flat tone. But with the egg in place," she puts to the egg back down, "It looks like many different tones, because things always look darker when positioned next to the lightest point," she pauses.
"Do you understand?"
He slides the blindfold back into place and attempts to look up at her but he finds that he can't look her in the eye because they're just too blue so he slides his gaze to the left instead.
"I never meant to hurt him," he says softly, avoiding the question and still not meeting her gaze.
"… I know," she whispers, then shuts the desk lamp off and repositions the egg a bit. "But do you understand?"
He looks toward her again and finds that maybe he does.
"Yeah," he says softly, standing up, "I think maybe I do."
A few more days pass by before Riku speaks to Namine again. He still spends most of his time in the white room, but one day he decides to go visit Sora.
He stands in the pod room for a long time, gazing at Sora's sleeping form suspended in Namine's pod. He's grown, Riku can tell, because his clothes look like they're becoming too small and he seems to have thinned out a bit. He'll be waking up soon.
Riku'll have to leave before then. He sighs and presses his fingers against the glass of the pod, then begins to speak.
"I'm- I'm sorry, Sora," he begins, leaning his head against the pod too. "I-I never meant to hurt you," he chokes, tears welling up in his eyes, "I'm sorry I'm leaving before you wake up, I'm sorry I won't be here. But you'll be fine. You always have been," the tears are sliding down his face now, and he's powerless to stop them, "But I promise I'm going to… I'm going to get better. I'm going to be a better person, Sora. For you,"
"And then maybe someday I'll be okay again, and we can be together on that island again. Kairi too. And all our old friends. Maybe someday, everything'll be okay again."
He's sobbing now, and he's fallen to his knees, grabbing at the glass in a last attempt to stay grounded. "I'm sorry! I'm- I'm going to fix everything for you. I promise," he cries, and then he breaks down.
Namine finds him an hour or so later, and she just wordlessly helps him back upstairs.
The day after his breakdown he talks to Namine again.
They're sitting in the white room, just like usual, her at one end of the table drawing and him just sitting at the other end.
"I'm leaving," he says suddenly, meeting her eyes for the first time since he's been here. It's only then that he realizes she can't tell whether he's looking straight at her or not because of the blindfold.
But he thinks she knows.
"I'm going to try and fix things. I'm going to help Sora," he sighs, then smiles, "I'm going to be a better person for him. Someone who can deserve a person like him."
Namine drags him back to the drawing desk one last time. But this time, after turning the lamp on, she flips the sketchpad on the desk open and sits instead.
The page she's turned to already has a drawing on it, and he finds himself staring at a perfect likeness of the egg on the table.
"Do you see the shadow?" she asks, gesturing at the egg, then at the drawing, "The darkest point is right here, right?" she points on her sketch to the black spot that's shaded in darkest right beneath the egg. Riku looks at the egg.
She's right, as always.
"But you see, as the shadow goes on, the further it gets away from the egg, the lighter it gets," she says, gesturing on the pad with a pencil, "And eventually it just disappears."
Riku nods, watching Namine tweak some lines on the already perfect drawing. Suddenly she sighs and puts the pencil down, then stands.
Grabbing Riku by the shoulders, she looks him straight in the eyes. "You're gonna be fine, do you understand?" He just smiles in response and pulls her into a hug.
"Yeah," he whispers into her hair, "I think I do."
-End-
So how was it? Review and let me know!