A/N: Still keeping this story strong! In this chapter, Namine is introduced for the first time along with her cousin (it's not really hard to guess who XP). As much as I hate to admit it, this chapter is in flashback mode through most of it. Chapter five, though, gets downright intriguing. XD
Disclaimer: I don't own anything and am not connected with anything.
Chapter 4: Fears and Insecurities
A female redhead's penetrating indigo eyes inevitably assessed Axel, who turned his head away more rapidly than an owl's as he hunched his shoulders. This girl recognized this move: the classic shy guy concealment. Why did male specimen assume their shoulders would provide sufficient hiding when they could not truly become invisible on a whim? That only happened in the movies. She sagely nodded her head upon this recollection, observing how Axel jogged down the street with Roxas Highwind trailing after him as always.
"Hey, Namine," she told the blonde drawing pictures and lounging on the bed, "there's apparently a special guest on your street for Christmas."
Namine perked her head up, blanching instantly. "Who is it?"
"Just Axel...Naito. That's his last name, I think. Most don't remember it, though."
The familiar name spoken from her cousin's lips caught the aspiring artisan off-guard as she dropped her colored pencils, deaf to the rest of the sentence. Then, she shrieked horribly when oncoming fear struck her like a speeding car. Diving inside her closet, Namine slammed the shuttered doors closed as she cowered among her heap of clothes.
"You're just playing a trick on me, Kairi!" her muffled voice alleged her cousin.
Kairi merely rolled her eyes before abruptly opening the closet, revealing the trembling girl lying before her. "Do you think I'd ever joke about your crush coming to town?"
As she crawled from her hiding place, Namine shook her head. "No, I guess you wouldn't. Still, it's a scary thought—Axel coming here. I mean, I know he's my good friend, but"—and here, she blushed—"he's definitely beginning to mean something to me."
"Well, I would hope so. You two hung out a lot whenever Roxas was out with Olette...and still do, I might add."
After Kairi's brief recollection, Namine sighed deeply as she perched on her bed again. "The thing of it is, I'm not sure if Axel has a girlfriend. I mean, he's very charming and all...in a devilish way. He says the funniest things, he's really nice, not to mention good-looking..."
"Where are you going with all this?" Kairi interrupted.
"Axel probably has a girlfriend, and I'm just not good enough for him. We're better off friends."
Namine's favorite cousin's jaw dropped so suddenly that it was a struggle for her just to distort her lips into a prudently thin line. She could hardly imagine Namine and Axel not unite as a couple in love. All the signs were there. And the fact that Axel often became shy around the creative genius girl? That amused Kairi, for the smirking redhead hardly ever departed from his bold behavior and outgoing personality. Why he acted that way sometimes around Namine was beyond her sense of reality.
"Namine," she spoke rather stiffly, "Axel is a good guy. He's only two years older than you. Besides, I'm sure you, out of all people, know more about his character than anybody other than Roxas, who's also your best friend."
Namine smiled ruefully; Roxas had served as a friend she could converse with about any topic before Axel came along. They always ate sea-salt ice cream together and other such activities until Olette coyly asked Roxas on a date one day. After that, the miniscule events that made up a friendship slowed, only occurring on weekends. Lonely, Namine depended on Roxas' two other friends to fill the void. Sure, Demyx and Zexion were likeable boys, but they just weren't best friend material to her like Roxas.
However, when Axel started attending Twilight Town High School, two months after Olette and Roxas became a couple, everything changed. The redhead was a bedraggled ragamuffin of a freshman, no stranger to the escapee lifestyle. Fully emancipated (though not legally) from his family, he often wandered over to the middle school after meeting Roxas. Unlucky Axel had no luck befriending people his age, so he went by the nostalgic philosophy of the younger the better.
It wasn't long after his arrival at school before he proceeded to hang out with Roxas; the two were practically inseparable and found a confidante in each other. Namine, hopeful that she would gain another friend, though older, realized that she had actually started a conversation with him after school. She had never done so with any other peer; the particular person would come to her, usually. Before she was even aware of it, she and Axel became best friends when she went to high school herself.
Even though she felt this strong bond between them, only surpassed by Axel's and Roxas' also close friendship, Namine had another obstacle. This one pained her more than any other one in her life that she had had to face. It was getting over her ex-boyfriend, the only teenager who had dared to break her heart on purpose. Now, Marluxia had come off as a gentle sort last year, a sort that she had been inevitably attracted to. He had approached her at Kairi's fifteenth birthday party with a special offer in mind.
"So, darling," he had murmured affectionately, "do you want to be my girl?"
Namine had accepted unashamedly. After all, he did seem like a good person.
As the months passed, Marluxia sent her through a whirlwind of genuinely splendid surprises. The date in the fancy restaurant, the kiss in the rain, the lavishly expensive gifts, and, of course, the constant bouquets he arranged himself swept her off her feet.
Who knew their relationship could take such a drastic turn for the worse?
Four months into the dating, Namine had fallen into the most profound love she thought possible with Marluxia. However, she had never remotely taken into consideration that he had no real interest in her due to his refusal to grow close to her.
She had been the one to gamble her heart by informing him of her secrets, one of which was her hidden talent of sketching. And yet, he had not a care. Namine knew their relationship fell apart when that infuriating Larxene's lips landed on his one evening while she waited for him for a date. That public display of affection six yards away from where she stood scarred her for life. Despite his being two years her senior, she could have sworn that they had the chemistry that all strong couples possessed. Yet, here he was kissing another girl without him so much as concluding their relationship, the filthy, two-timing rat! Humiliated and in tears, Namine had a fight with Marluxia as well as ending the relationship the next day.
Ever since that revolting, awful event, she felt as if her entire world had shattered around her while she struggled to collect the fragments. She feared rejection above all else and fretted that male teenagers as a whole behaved like Marluxia, craftily clever and capable of stealing young girls' hearts. So what if Axel had a different side, a darker side that pleasured in bringing pain? What if the young man Namine thought she knew was really a monster? She hated even pondering that, but she remembered that she had never accused Marluxia of such malicious deeds. Staying firm that she and Axel remain friends, she preferred to keep it that way and not thoroughly open up to him.
Restlessly, Namine abandoned her bed to timidly gaze out her window, searching for spikes of scarlet hair that would compel her back into hiding.
She found none.
Sighing in relief, she finally turned to Kairi to voice her lengthy meditation, summing it up briefly. "But, Kairi, maybe...maybe he'll turn out like Marluxia. Maybe he's just using me and taking advantage of me."
"Namine, he likes you!" Kairi literally put her food down as she stamped it indignantly.
She added, "Don't you see? Every sign that could show that he cares about you is there. He even looked up toward your bedroom a while ago, only to see me. Then, he acted like he'd been caught when he tried hiding himself with his shoulders. I know that move, Namine. I had seen Sora do it before he finally asked me out."
"What makes you the love doctor?" Namine inquired bleakly, sitting down and resting her chin in her hands.
"Well, I plan to be a psychologist for one thing. And for another, I had gone out with five guys before Sora—not all at the same time by the way. Besides, just because Marluxia was a totally arrogant prick doesn't mean all guys are that way. Namine, Axel is nice. He may smirk a lot and look like a resident 'bad boy', but trust me, he has a good heart."
Shifting her shoulders to and fro, Namine flipped through her sketchbook to select the page on which she had started an elaborate Christmas tree. She goaded herself into picking up a forest green colored pencil for shading. It would look like the best tree ever if she could color inside the lines...
"You are going to ask Axel out this holiday season as long as I'm around!"
Crap! Namine had practically scribbled outside her precise lines once she heard Kairi's confident announcement. Frantically, she took out a regular pencil, attempting to erase her coloring faux pas. Why must her cousin ruin her formerly immaculate tree by frightening her to death?
Exasperatedly, she shut her sketchbook, angered that her carefully planned Christmas drawing was, in her eyes, inevitably ruined. This felt more and more like the onset of Armageddon to her.
"Look, I have an opportunity to help you here, thanks to my family staying with yours. And I plan on taking it, Namine. I plan on taking it."
"But, Kairi," Namine unknowingly whined, "it's impossible! I'm not good enough for him."
"Then it's time for you to look in the mirror."
Shoving her cousin to the vanity, Kairi thinned her lips crisply when she noticed Namine shutting her eyes tightly.
Moaning, Namine declared, "I'm ugly! Why else has no one asked me out yet? I mean, there must be something wrong with me. I don't have confidence."
"Now, that last sentence was the only correct one you said," Kairi beamed. "Nami, you don't need a boyfriend to know you look fabulous. That much is true. Open your eyes."
Reluctantly, the blonde cracked her ocean blue orbs open at a squint.
"Wider...come on! Hey, that's it! You're great on the outside as well as the inside."
Here came the defining moment. Namine did as Kairi instructed, finding that honestly...
She did possess beauty, however subtle it may be. Did Axel like her, though?
"I'm telling you, you don't need a boyfriend to know how good you look. You do need confidence, though, for a boyfriend."
Meticulously meditating over Kairi's words, Namine knew the truth behind them. If she desperately yearned to have Axel as her boyfriend, she had to have confidence in herself. Sure, she had proved that she had some in the past, but it would eventually fade away to the great unknown. Just the word itself, confidence, made her shudder. How could she obtain that sense of empowerment for longer than two weeks? Maybe Kairi could assist her in this goal, after all. She hoped for this more than anything. Determined that no one would ever hurt her like Marluxia ever again, Namine stood up from her cushioned stool with a stern resolve. No longer did the depressing feeling of worthlessness deter her. And to think, it took a wise cousin to see how self-conscious she was.
Her azure eyes aglow with contentment, Namine turned around in order to speak with a somewhat smug Kairi, who had every right to be proud.
"My confidence is back, Kai. Now, I have no idea why I was bummed out."
"Now, don't say that," Kairi replied. "Marluxia is the biggest idiot around town. If you start dating Axel after school each day after break, he'll realize what he's missing out on."
Almost on impulse, Namine hugged the ambitious redhead. "Thanks! It's no wonder you're my best friend as well as family."
"Well, you at least need a smart gal pal, and I'm your girl!"
The two girls giggled before letting go of each other from their practically sisterly embrace. Kairi herself couldn't believe her cousin was so forward as to do that, for Namine had refused to so much as touch people in even a friendly way since Marluxia. She made a private not to herself to avenge a relative's emotional abuse the next time she even glimpsed that jerk. Why he even dyed his hair pink in the first place ceased to amaze her; Kairi thought he was surely on the path to insanity.
"Let's pinky swear on something," she told Namine as she wagged her smallest finger. "Promise me that you will be confident in the future, be a changed girl, and make Marluxia regret ever using you."
"Sounds like a promise to me," Namine said simply with a rare grin on her face.
A/N: Well, for explanation, what happened to Namine with Marluxia is very loosely based on a true story. I had a sort of, kind of, yet not really a boyfriend (secret admirer). He didn't cheat on me or anything, though he basically ignored me after he wrote only two notes back. Yes, notes were our only source of communication. I guess you can say he kind of treated me like crap, if ignorance can be considered that.
ANYWAY, awkward topic, yeah. Well, anyway, review please. Chapter five's gonna be pretty random and chapter six...oh, hahahaha, prepare to be randomfied!