Author's Notes: I really didn't expect any review for this collection (especially after the second story), but I'm still disappointed. Why spend time on a story no one reads? So for now on all the chapters after this are posted on my website. Please people, no flames? If you don't like it, don't review. If you liked it, then fill free too. These aren't suppose to be read as "deep meaning" pieces. They're suppose to be light-hearted and fun. Well, some of them anyway. This might be a little deep, and a little sad, actually. But not a tearjerker. I hope.
Boy's Club
3rd Story
Title: Portrait of You
Summary: (Prequel to KH2) Roxas, Number XIII of the Organization, is in charge of guarding a young witch. Expecting a night of boredom, when the girl innocently asks to paint his picture he eagerly accepts in order to kill time. But what ends up being painted is not a canvas, but the heart.
"Can I... Can I draw you?"
Roxas blinked and stepped away from
the window. Outside it was dark, clouds obscured the moon and it was
raining. It always seemed to be raining.
"Excuse me?"
The girl he was in charge of watching ducked down
behind her sketch pad and bowed her head politely. "That is... If
you want to, if it's allowed and everything."
He looked at the clock, 1:30am. It's not like there was anything
better to do. "Sure kid. Why not? It's not like I'm going
anywhere."
The girl looked up and smiled, her teeth dazzling in
the darkness. "My name's Naminé,
what's your
name?"
The girl, Naminé, emphasized the "your"—making it
impossible for him to give off the customary number that was already
on his lips.
Roxas frowned, and then sighed. "Roxas. Why do you
want to know anyway? It's not like you'll live long enough to
remember it."
It was out of his lips before he could take it
back. Impossibly cruel, but true. He could see no reason why the
Organization would continue to hold on to this girl. Her usefulness
was in trapping Sora. Which she had failed to do. An operation which
she botched by revealing herself and telling Sora the truth, helping
him, and going against the Organization. Which was why he was here
waiting for the higher ups to decider her fate.
Also... They are
both Nobodys. Even if they did let her go, where would she go? What
kind of life would she have outside of these walls? In a way they
were doing her a favor.
"Roxas... I like it." Naminé smiled again. His name on her lips came off of her tongue like a favorite ice-cream flavor. It startled him, no one had ever said his name with any joy before.
But then reality set in. It wasn't joy, just a manipulation. They couldn't feel joy.
"Look, are you going to do this
or not?"
"Oh, sorry." Naminé stood up and walked toward
him.
"Ah!"
CRASH
Stupid... And lame and horribly uncool. She had reached out toward him and instead of staying calm he had reacted stupidly, tripping over his chair and falling on to his back.
"Ow...ow...ow...
Dammit..."
"Are you okay?" Naminé asked. "Maybe I should
call someone?"
"Yeah,
and let them see what kind of a loser I am? No thanks."
Roxas thought, thinking of his best and only friend Axel. If he could
see him like this he would never stop talking about it for weeks.
"How about you just keep your
distance?"
Naminé looked distraught, but then smiled. "Sorry,
but I can't do that."
"What?"
She gently reached out and
touched his face, leaning down until they were on eye level. Her
eyes, they seemed so familiar suddenly. As if those warm eyes had
always been gazing at him.
"You know... You don't have to do it
alone."
"What... What are you talking about?" Roxas weakly
tried to slap one of her hands away as she moved to cup his face
between her palms.
"Everyone is alone. At first.
So they think its natural to be alone. And maybe they're right,
but... I need people. I need you. I think, yes, I think in a way this
reflects art."
"What
the hell is she talking about?"
Were his subconscious thoughts. None of this made any sense...
But in a way it made perfect sense.
Naminé looked sad suddenly and stood up, looking out from the same window he had gazed out of moments before. "Art is a reflection of a person's self. What that person feels, if they're happy, if they're sad, all their emotions. Especially on a still life, which is a reflection of life. Of one person seen through another's eyes. Who that person is, what they want, where they're going. No two still lifes, even if they're done by the same person about the same subject, no two are ever alike because what the artist sees is always different. It's constantly changing!"
"I don't understand what you're talking about." Roxas interrupted, picking himself off the floor and brushing the dust off his robes. "About paintings and emotions and people... We're Nobodys! We don't have emotions and we don't understand life. We're imitations!"
Flustered, Naminé turned toward him. "Don't you think I know that! Don't you think I understand! You assume that just because I'm not you and I'm not a part of your "organization" that I don't matter! Marluxia picked me off the street, seeing my "talent", gave me a name and used me. He died... Right there before my eyes and I didn't feel anything. Nothing at all! So don't tell me about our emotions."
Lightening cracked and they turned away from each other, both angry and disturbed by the words of the other.
"Imitations... They also exist
in art." Naminé continued after awhile. "They're copies that
someone made so that people everywhere can enjoy the original. Copies
bought and sold by people who may never see or own the original
themselves. Though they have less value, they are just as beautiful.
But they are not the original. That's what we are. Imitations of
people. And that's why I want to paint you, because I'm curious about
what an imitation of an imitation will look like."
Roxas didn't
know what to say. It was the first time he had argued with someone
outside of the Organization and the first time he had thought deeply
about who he really was.
"An imitation of an imitation..." He
muttered under his breath, repeating her words. Why was she telling
him this? Wasn't she the one that believed that they weren't
complete, that they all had to return to their original bodies? Yet
she was telling him to value himself. In her own way, and through
art, she was telling him to value himself as someone outside of the
Organization. Even if he wasn't a person.
"Sit down." Naminé stood behind him and forced him into a chair. She arranged the position of his face to her liking, combed back his hair, and turned on a nearby lamp. Her usual crayons were ignored in favor of a simple child's watercolor set and watercolor paper.
For several seconds they sat there, staring at each other, then Naminé looked away and began to paint.
The intensity of her eyes made
him embarrassed, but Roxas refused to look away from her confident
strokes of the brush and her eyes and wondered what she was seeing,
what he looked like through them.
Did she even see anything? Did
she believe her own words? Roxas thought over these questions and an
hour and then another hour passed.
The rain had stopped and dawn came when they were interrupted.
"Yo, Roxas, how's babe-watch going?" Axel joked as he stepped over the threshold with a bag of dough nuts in his hand.
"Huh?" Roxas looked up as if
from a trance. "What are you doing here?"
"What am I doing
here? Are you becoming a model or something? Since when did you like
paintings?"
Hearing the humor in his voice, Roxas' ears went
red. "You're wrong! It's just something to—"
"It's finished."
"Huh?" Both Roxas and Axel
turned toward Naminé at her sudden announcement.
"What's
finished?" Axel asked as he stepped around Roxas to view what
Naminé had finished painting.
Before he could touch it, Naminé took it off of the easel and rolled it up and held it out to Roxas.
"Here, I hope you like it.
Please don't open it until I leave though."
Before Roxas could
say anything, his superiors came and took Naminé away. It will be
over a year before they see each other again. And when they do meet
again he will not remember her.
She turned and smiled at him, repeating her last words of her wish for him to enjoy her painting.
And then she was gone.
Axel, noticing the heavy atmosphere in the room, set down the bag of pastries and scratched the back of his head. "Want to fill me in on what just happened?"
Roxas started unrolling Naminé's painting, almost not hearing what Axel was saying.
"I mean, what really happened? You were alone the whole night with this girl, and then I find you here and she's painting you like you two are on the Titanic!"
This time Axel's sentence finally broke through the fog in his brain. "It wasn't like that!"
As Roxas protested (blushing all the while), Axel managed to sneak a peek at the painting.
"Hahaha..."
"What?
What's so funny?"
"Dude, I think you got scammed. That's the
crappiest painting I've ever seen!"
Angry at Axel's criticism, and confused, Roxas looked down to see...
That the portrait was empty. The paper was absolutely blank.
"What!?"
Axel started to roll on the floor with laughter. "She tricked you! Totally tricked you! I hope you didn't pay her. Who knows, maybe she'll become the next Van Gogh or something? Better save that painting Roxas, you might be able to sell it for a million dollars or something in the future."
"That... That girl..." Roxas
stood up out of his chair violently. For a minute all he could see
was red. She had tricked him! All that crap about wanting to see an
"imitation of an imitation" and this was all he got for his
efforts, for his wasted time? He should have never went along with
it!
He started to leave the room, but then turned back. One of her
crayons was laying on the chair, a white crayon and underneath it a
brush pointing toward the window.
The window... She had been facing the window. His back had been to the window and he had been so focused on her he hadn't noticed.
Roxas rushed toward the chair and
picked up the crayon, letting his portrait fall from his hands.
The
sun came through the window, illuminating the drops of water still
clinging to the glass, and the city was lit up in shades of pink and
pale orange and violet. Like the...
"Like the color of her
eyes..."
"What?" Axel stopped laughing and turned to look
out of the window, trying to see what he was looking at.
No, not the color of her eyes. Her eyes were blue. Blue like his. But at night, her eyes had been violet. Like the color being chased away by the dawn.
The clouds were lifting, turning white and being banished by the light.
"Art, is a reflection of a person's self. What that person feels, if they're happy, if they're sad, all these emotions. Especially on a still life, which is a reflection of life. Of one person seen through another's eyes. Who that person is, what they want, where they're going. No two still lifes, even if they're done by the same person about the same subject, no two are ever alike because what the artist sees is always different. It's constantly changing!"
Naminé, those were her words.
He could understand her words now. Just like the sun, tomorrow this view would be different. Tomorrow he would be different. This sunrise, even if it came like a thousand before them, this sunrise was just a copy of yesterdays, but it was different. He would not see this one again.
Just like she would not see him again. Not like this.
It is impossible to paint a perfect sunrise. It is impossible to paint an exact likeness of a person. And it is also impossible to make an imitation of an imitation. Because even if he is an "imitation"...
Roxas picked up the previously forgotten blank portrait and held it up to the light. As the sun's early rays his it his face wasn't shadowed by the blank piece of paper, but illuminated by it.
...He is himself. And there is only one of him. And his true self, even if he is not a person, is impossible to paint. Because you can not paint what was never there.
Or what a person, even a Nobody, really is by looking on the outside.
(Portrait of You—End 7/2/08)
