A/N: A new drabble series because I'm losing my mind and need an outlet. Probably going to end out being a varied degree of pairings, but they'll all be within the same AU setting. Different POVs, if you will.
Disclaimer: Don't own Kingdom Hearts. KTHNXBAI.
notes: Flannel shirts? BEST THING EVER.
There are days Namine won't speak at all. Riku hates those days, because they're filled with Kairi's glitter-babble and Larxene's poison-drabble, and the part of him that always calms down when he hears her speak isn't working because she isn't speaking. So Riku nods his head and bears Kairi's high pitched squeals and Larxene's scathing shrieks, wishing his friend would just come over and speak him, despite the fact that he knows she won't.
What Riku doesn't know is Namine wants to speak on those days, but it's not that she won't.
It's that she can't.
Because her throat is rubbed raw from screaming all night and sobbing through the early morning hours. She desperately wants to speak, to drown out Kairi's obvious flirty and Larxene's grating bitching with her own voice, but she physically cannot make a sound.
But Riku doesn't know that. Just like he doesn't know of the days she can't look at food without throwing up, nor of the days she doesn't sleep because the things in her mind won't be quiet. He won't know of these things either, because they're the poker cards she holds to her chest, the secrets she'll take to Davy Jones' grave.
If Riku knew she would be a freak, an unstable psycho, and she can't stand to have him think of her that way. She loves him, has since they were so so little, ever since he helped her off the nasty play ground floor and told the bullies off for throwing sand in her pale blonde hair. If he thinks of her like that, sees how disgusting she really is, then she'll lose the last bit of sanity she has left.
So she sits through those days on the other side of the cafeteria, with Axel, Zexion, and Saix, Roxas and Demyx too sometimes, and watches the boy she loves with world-weary eyes. She draws too, of course, draws him as the hero she's always known him to be, in her heart, but it's not the same as talking to him. She draws him with a funky bat-wing sword and bright, angry teal eyes, shoulder thrown back in definace as he faces the dark masses of monsters without fear and it feels right.
Namine watches him laugh sheepishly and grin at Kairi, perfect little sane Kairi, and feels tears well in her eyes. There's something in the back of her mind, screaming at her to strangle Kairi, to fight and bitch and kick her fake, prima-dona ass to Atlantica and back. The violent thoughts bombard her mind, all screaming at her to move, move, move, to kill, kill, kill, but she only sits there next to Axel, trembling. I'm crazy, she thinks, fingers clutching at the table top in a white knuckled grip.
I'm crazy, but only for you, Riku. Always for you.
