A/N: I bet my next fic will take place in the summer.

I need to learn some new mind-blowing tactics. It's simply awful when you lose your sense of self, but trust me. When you need it most, and you lose it, your childhood becomes something you imperatively need. It's very, very easy to get caught up in life and throw away your childhood, and it just goes by faster and faster. That dim little light of magic that you once could cut with a knife is just growing dimmer and dimmer, and you have to catch it again or else you'll lose yourself in adulthood, forever.

I think that, maybe, you won't lose yourself though. I think that childhood is constantly reattach-able.

On Saturday morning, there is no sun. I slide out of my bed, and it is very dark. And warm – she probably turned the heat up a lot hotter during the night so she could sleep. I crawl on all fours, my body completely drained, for some reason. I stretch from the floor to turn the knob, and the hallway is very dark, too. I turn around to see my red clock from within my room say '9:00AM.' Very precise.

Down in the kitchen, I look out the window. Snow piles halfway up wall-length glass. If I put my hand directly in front of me on the window, glass the only thing separating me from dense, piled snow. I breathe out steam on the window. It's snowing so hard, and the sky is so thick, I have no clue where the sun might be, it looks like evening, if anything.

On the couch in the living room, I turn on the television. Weather guy says 'snowed in.'

I flop on the floor, and worm my way upstairs. Crawl into Namine's bedroom. Peek up from the top of the bed to look at her, sleeping. I poke her face. She frowns.

"Wake up, we're gonna die."

"Hurrnh?"

"We're dying. Ice demon reclaiming its rightful territory after its four-thousand-year slumber."

"Fuck you, I'm tired."

"For serious, Namine, check it. If you thought there was a lot of snow yesterday, you've got another thing coming."

"I don't care."

"Oh yes, you do." I proclaim, and gather her up inside all of her comforters and whatever. Like a homeless man and his bag of collected garbage. I haul her up like Saint Nicholas, which is difficult to reenact because I have no beard or reindeer and because she won't stop kicking and screaming, 'Put me down' and 'I duhn want the snow' and 'I'm gonna pee myself.'

"Get a grip," I yell, and stumble out of the bedroom with her all slung over my shoulder. I nearly fall down the stairs and then toss her down in front of the window, where she explodes out of the blankets, all red and pissed-off looking. She scratches irritably at her face, and then looks out the window, and her mouth gets all wide.

"Whoa,"

"Yeah, whoa," I sit down on some of the bedding next to her.

"We could make, like, a snowman armada."

"For sure," I say, yawning. My eyes are closed, and I feel her place a hand on my lap, and her head curl into my shoulder. Her breath on my collarbone. I wish she wouldn't do this. It's screwing with what I've totally been trying to reconstruct in the past twenty-four hours. I grip her forearm.

"It's cliché shit, getting stuck here." I mutter.

"For totally."

So I get up, and she slides off of me. I step away a couple paces. She looks up at me, angrily.

"I'm not a fucking succubus, Roxas."

"You can't help it that you're so…" I can't find the word.

"I don't care what I am, I just want you stop doing this." She stands up.

"Doing what?" I ask, getting pretty mad.

"Treating me like a child!" she nearly yells.

"I fucking wish I were treating you like a child, Namine."

"It's too late to wish that, Roxas. We screwed this up."

"Therefore, I think it's logical not to get too, y'know…"

"Tell me what you want, when you want it! It's that simple, stop making these decisions on your own!"

"Goddamnit, Namine, It's not that simple!" I yell. For real, I haven't been this angry or frustrated in a long time.

"Yes it is! Just say it! Just say, 'I can't do it,' and that's it. You don't have to be embarrassed, it's just me!"

"It's just you, huh? Fuck that. Being mutual isn't what we're going for. It can't be - we'll get so fucked up."

"Why do you say that?!" She yells, starting to cry, "I don't think that's true at all!"

"Think about it, Namine." I say, seriously.

"I don't understand!"

"Who do you think I am?! What do you really think I want? What do you want, on the other hand? Do you want all of this to go away?" She actually nods. "Well, it's not going to! You don't want me to treat you like a child, but you sure do act like one."

"I'm not a fucking child!"

"Dear God, Namine, it's this!" I point at floor, where we just were, now we're standing. "We keep fucking doing this! Like we're stuck, like children."

"…I don't think you're a child, either." She says, tears dripping off her face.

"I don't care. It's not about what you think." I say, exasperated, getting nervous about this, "This is all in my head."

"You're freaking me out, Roxas."

I just stand there. What the hell am I saying? I'm leaving myself in a total void, and it hurts so much. Why am I not sick anymore? But, why does my head hurt so badly? There are so many fucking questions that I leave for myself.

"Namine… what do you think I want?"

She doesn't say anything. Silence.

I stare at my feet. There is no noise.

"Answer me. What do you think I want?"

"I…" she says hoarsely.

"You don't want to know, do you?"

"Roxas, stop…"

"You don't want to fucking know what's going on, do you?!"

"Roxas-"

"Shut up! You can't even imagine, can you? What do you think - tell me! What do you think I want?"

"I… I don't know-"

"You mean, you don't want to know?!" I shout, stepping forward and pulling her up to my height by the front of her shirt, "Does it make you worried? Does it make you sick, maybe?!"

"You're really scaring me…" she says pitifully, her eyes wide.

"Just fucking say it." I whisper, her shirt all gathered up in my fists.

"I… Roxas," she chokes out, and I move my face into her neck. I inhale deeply.

"I'm telling you, Namine, It just isn't that simple." I whisper, trying to make her understand. "It's just like that. I just can't tell you everything." And I let go of her shirt, and she slides out of my grip, and she staggers away. Her face is blank, I can't tell if she understands, or if she's just pissed off at me.

"So… what should I do?" she asks.

"I don't know." I mutter.

This is the ruins of all of my beautiful expectations for mutualism. The world is not perfect, connected. It's scary. Interpersonal connections are horrifying. And the deeper they are, the scarier.

My best advice, for any kind of relationship troubles, whether they are for as long-term as marriage or just trouble connecting with people firsthand, is this:

Walk away, like nothing ever happened. Pursue nothing. The world is dangerous.

I can hear Namine breathing.

"When I consider it," she says, "I just want you. I simply love you." She hesitates for a second, and says "Sex."

"You don't listen to a word I say, do you?" I ask, rhetorically. "You make this very difficult for me."

"I'm just getting it out, so you know."

"You don't actually feel that way. Everything will change once we start school again. Once you see your friends. Once I go to college. Then… it'll all make sense." I say, getting frightened.

"I do feel that way! And school is shit! And I don't have friends. And I don't think you'll want to go to college."

"Namine, for God's sake," I yell, "You really are just a kid. You just don't understand anything."

"I fucking do!" She yells, and she steps forwards and kisses me. She pulls on my shirt. And I step away, and hit her in the face.

At first, I kind of don't know what just happened. I didn't punch her or anything, like I felt like doing. Her face is completely stunned. She's looking away. A hand-mark forms on her cheek.

"… I am so sorry." I mutter after a second.

"Why did you hit me?"

"I don't know."

She looks at me like I might be crazy, and then looks away, nervously.

"… You need to work on that," she mutters, turning to leave, but I grab her hand. She pushes away, and I grab her shoulders. "What the hell do you want, Roxas?" she asks, shaking a little, "'Cause sure don't know." Her eyes widen, "Do you want to beat me up or somethin'?" she sniffs.

"No!" I yell, "No. God. I don't – I don't know." I start coughing a little. I guess she thinks this is a slight diversion, because she kisses me again. I try not to spit in her mouth.

I mean, what the fuck. I'm getting nowhere. I don't want to do this again, I really don't. I'm just tired. But I can't run away. There's too much snow outside.

"Roxas," she whispers into my mouth.

"Yeah?" She stops moving. She looks at me with tired eyes.

"Do whatever you want."

Great. I have to make this decision. I'd be the bad guy. It's sure as hell a lot easier for weak people to flop out on decision making. But I'm not a strong person. She should know this by now.

"Geez, Namine," I say, like a little dirt-nosed schoolboy.

"You want me to do it for you?" she asks, her voice very low. I don't really know if I'm turned on or not. I don't need this, but I don't wanna throw it all away, either. I'm just too tired to make a decision. I sigh.

She kisses my neck. She bites it.

"Ow." I mumble, irritated.

"Sorry." She moves down further, kissing my collarbone. She pulls my shirt up. She keeps going down. Down. Okay. I want this. She stops right above my boxers.

I choke out a frustrated groan. She's taking this all slow, and stuff. She pulls off my shorts, and I can feel her breathing – there. Christ. I bury a hand in her hair. I feel her twitch beneath my grasp.

"Nuh-uh." She says, shaking her head.

"Come on," I sigh.

"Really, no."

"God, please." I groan, "Really. Please." I'm actually willing to beg for that.

"I really don't want to." She says, her breath making me shiver. I can feel my hips trembling. "Jesus, Roxas," she sighs, and stands up, taking me in her hand. She squeezes, hard.

"Ah! Ow…" Oh, God. This is really weird. And mean. But mostly weird.

I don't know. I don't really like this idea – her doing this for me. It's almost sicker than just doing that.

"Ah… Christ – stop." I splutter, pushing her away. I realize that I'm completely naked and she's fully dressed.

"Do you really want this?" She asks, tiredly. "Do you care?"

"I want you to kind of like it." I say, pulling her shirt over her head. I move to pull off her underwear, but I see she's got her arms crossed over her breasts.

"Are you scared?"

"No."

"Do you care?"

"Yeah."

"Then put your bloody arms down." I pull off her underwear and stand up. I kiss her on the cheek. God, I really wanna do this. Just 'cause… it's there. I dunno. One of her hands wraps around me again and I cough into her shoulder.

"Anh – don't do that unless you want this to end right now."

"Fine. Ugh. I was just trying to do the right thing." She grumbles, as I lick around her chest and stomach. "Roxas, you really want me to…?"

"Nah, it's ok." I mutter, and put my hands on her hips, readying myself.

"Jesus – not standing up."

I push her onto the floor, growling. I kneel over her. She looks all pissed off in the paleness of the snow. One of her hands touches my lower stomach, and I twitch a little.

"Now?" I ask, shuddering.

"Yeah," She takes a deep breath. So I do it.

And… I just kind of sit there. I mean, what the hell? I just don't have it in me – I feel like arguing like we're kids, or something. That's how this feels.

She shifts uncomfortably under me.

"Y'know…" she mumbles, "This isn't wonderful."

"Shut it," I snap, and start moving. This is so weird! It's hard to explain, like it's not sad anymore or something.

"This is bad," she pants.

"Yeah. I know."

"Really… It's – this is bad."

"Can we worry about it later, please?" I moan, doing this even though I know it'll kill me in a few short minutes.

I keep coughing as I'm doing this, like there's something stuck in my throat.

"I feel pathetic." She says, a breath between each word.

"Ok – ah – can we please talk later? It's…" I cough, "It's hard to do this in conversation. I mean, do you wanna flip over? 'Cause I'm not making much… much progress here."

"I mean, the whole subconscious avoiding thing. Suppressing something that's gonna tear us to oblivion later just for sex." Then she starts gasping.

"Yeah… I… know what you mean." I pant, jolting harder. I'm not proud of myself.

"Oh man, Roxas. Roxas."

"Will you shut up?" I shout, and keep shouting. "AH – sorry. I'm a hypocrite. Christ. Namine…"

She yells again, really loud, then her body slackens. Breathing heavily. She's gonna get it before I do. I mean the life-shattering awareness and everything.

"Fuck!" I shout, and fall over. And smell blood. God – that'll take forever to clean off. I look up to see if she's crying yet.

She's not. She just looks searingly angry.

"Get off."

I quickly stumble off, and stand up, attempting to wipe some of the blood off of me. She gets up too, and glares at me.

"You mad at me?" I growl at her, feeling my face heat up.

"Yeah."

"Piss off." I'd like to go take a shower.

Then, she shoves me, like she would do when she was nine or something. I notice that she covered in blood; it's smeared on her knees.

"What the fuck is your problem?"

"Aren't you mad that you feel like this?" she's turning pale.

"Like what?"

"A little kid. That's why you punched me, right?"

I really don't think so. I think I'm just losing my mind, or something.

She puts her hand to her forehead, and kneels back down on the floor.

"Too anemic to feel like a bitch?" I spit, acidly. She groans.

"Thank you, Roxas. I appreciate that."

"You're welcome." And I gather her up.

x

Namine floats absently in the bathtub. I'm kneeling over the sink, trying to get all the dried blood off.

"How disgusting."

"Yeah, whatever, douche bag." She mumbles.

"Will you lay off already? Don't you think it's kinda creepy that we're acting more like siblings now, suddenly?" I shudder. Siblings, again. God. She sighs.

"It's pretty fucking – I mean, freaking screwed up."

"That water's turning red."

"It's like, when you'd walk down the street with Mom and Dad and some lady would walk up and say, 'Oh, what beautiful little blonde children you have! They're so cute. I'm sure you adore them.' And then we'd want to kill each other afterwards. And we never knew why. Mom and dad would sit down at a bench somewhere and watch as we tried to pull each other's hair out and scratch each other with fingernails we never had, y'know, 'cause we chew 'em. We'd just be poking each other with meaty finger stubs."

"What the fuck…? Namine, that bath water looks like cherry kool-aid."

She yawns.

"Or like, whenever during Christmas…" her eyes droop, "And mom and dad would tell us to sing hymns and pray and shit. They'd say, 'Be thankful for each other, since so many people in Bosnia are fighting right now.' That whole thing was going on… 'It's so strange to see European people in such a poor state.' And then they'd walk away to secretly wrap our gifts. And we'd try to kill each other again, because we had some sort of contempt for each other."

"I don't remember doing that anytime recently."

"Well, we were always really young." And she falls asleep. That's probably bad. She's filled most of that bathtub with her own blood. So, I scoop her out and dump her on my bed. Which now has even more blood on it. I slap her face a couple times to wake her up.

"Hurrnh? Roxas, damn it, I'm tired. And cold." She curls up.

"You need to eat something; you look like a molted crab. All meaty and pale."

She sighs, and says nothing. So I go downstairs, and grab a can of spaghetti, and pour hot water into a pan.

"Eat this." I say, shoving a fork of cold spaghetti at her face, back upstairs. She takes it, and I ring out a washcloth in the pan, and splat it on her forehead. I grab a towel really quick from the bathroom and slide it underneath her, then pull up the covers.

"You have a pretty weird way of taking care of people," she mumbles, forking out more spaghetti. "This stuff is terrible, y'know."

I pull on some pajama bottoms, and sit on the bed next to her, leaning my head against the headboard. Breathe in. Why doesn't this feel awful? Why am I not uncomfortable? I cross my legs.

"Namine, do you still draw?"

"Yeah, I have some sketchbooks lying around."

"May I see them?"

"No."

I look at her, trying to appear disappointed. Her face is all scrunched up in this pouty thing.

"They're mine."

Aw. How adorable. Like, really.

"Okay." I laugh. She's got a little more color. I lie down on my back next to her. "Hey, Namine, how far back can you remember?"

"What do you mean?"

"Like, some people can't remember anything from before they were six. Some people can remember their own infancy."

"Um," she mumbles, "I remember you almost kicking me to death when I was three. I had lots of bruises on my ribcage. But I don't think that's my first memory…"

"I remember eating a rock."

"I remember eating an entire snail."

"We used to dare each other to do crazy stuff like that." I say, smiling. "Like, provoking horses at petting zoos."

She breathes through her nose. Stares at the ceiling, wistfully. What are you thinking about? Are you thinking that it's strange that we can be nostalgic like this, after doing things like… that?

Sex isn't real. Perhaps that's what it is. Complete psychological blockage, or denial. Or maybe we just don't care. We bring up stupid little things about childhood – stuff that doesn't really matter anymore. It really doesn't, we've screwed it all up in about one week. All those childhood memories just kind of lay there, abandoned, for this new, demented thing we've created. Maybe? I think that's how it is.

"Why can't I look at your art, Namine?"

She thinks for a moment.

"It's very hard to explain." She says.

"Go ahead and try."

"Well…" she pauses, "Here's a way to put it. If you walked up to an art professor, and said, 'Congratulations, you get to showcase porn,' he'd understand completely."

"…What?"

She blushes.

"Oh, well, maybe that's not a very good explanation." She breathes in, "It's like this… music – it's a projection of the soul. When you make music, or sing, or whatever, It's soul. Music, like records and CDs… that's pornography of the soul. Listening to music is masturbation of the soul."

I nod, raising an eyebrow.

"Art – usually – is a projection of being. And emotion. You draw what you feel, what you want to duplicate. You project a reflection of desire. So, observed art is like… pornography of the mind. Yeah. It provokes being and thought… so observing art is like masturbation of the mind and emotion." she looks away, "Do you get it?"

"Are you drawing porn?"

"No! Roxas, God. Nevermind."

So we just lay there for a while. I don't know how long. Ten minutes, maybe. Not saying anything.

It's getting darker. It's probably about five or six PM… there's gotta be snow everywhere. But I can't see it from here; my window is directly behind me.

I try to think about the last song I heard. It's been weeks since I really listened to music. How strange. I like music. I like old music, I mean, eighties. Namine likes to call me the 'Contemporary Morrissey' because I really like him. I can relate to a lot of Smith's music.

I start humming 'Panic,' which is really a very terrible song. Very prejudiced.

'Panic on the streets of London… Panic on the streets of Birmingham...'

And Namine sings, "I wonder to myself…" We both start laughing.

"Sing, 'Girlfriend in a Coma,'" she says.

"No…" I laugh, "I'm bad at singing."

"I don't think so." She says, laying her head on my chest. I sigh. "What's the farthest back you can remember?" I smile.

"I remember when you were born."

Moment silent. She sits up, and looks down at me.

"You… you really do?"

"Yeah."

"What do you remember?"

"Not much. They left me at home for a couple hours. It was all over pretty quickly, I remember there was a lot of stress about it. Mom and Dad came home all tired looking, and I said, 'Where is she?'"

Namine lies back down on me again.

"And so they took this little caterpillar thing out of a carrier and I couldn't believe It was human. You were so small, and squishy. And red. I was like, 'Is that thing a person?'"

And then it finally hits me. Like I knew it would. And it hits Namine, too. I can feel my chest getting wetter with tears.

I don't know why we keep doing this, really. I wish we could end it. It's the same repeated crap, over and over again. And then again.

And it's embarrassing, too – letting yourself get all relaxed and comfortable only to fall apart again, hours later. Namine's sobbing her way into my armpit.

"I'm getting so tired of seeing you cry it makes me ill." I say, petting her hair. "You're scared, aren't you?" I whisper.

"Y-yeah."

"You don't really have anything to be scared of."

"I'm scared of Mom and Dad coming home."

"They're never going to know."

"They… they'll figure something out."

"They'll never know what actually happened."

"We're never going to be the same, Roxas!" she cries. Oh, God, I hope she's not about to snap. I curl up next to her and hold her against me.

"People naturally grow, they'll just think of it as some awkward step in adolescence or something."

"I don't think I'd be able to do it…" she sniffs, "Put up a façade of the family scene… it's just too disgusting."

"What else can we do?" I whisper. She doesn't say anything. "We can't do anything about that. When we stop doing it, we stop doing it. Then we can focus on all that family shit again."

"It's terrible." She says bitterly. "I hate being your sister. All we did as children was fight, and tear each other apart. And just when things started to get okay, we started all… this."

That stings a little. Were we really doing well, before? Did our lives before have any more worth than they do now? Did we have any hope in life?

Well, all I know is that now, we don't. We'll always be stuck remembering all this - which we're doing. Even though we'll know that we were just dumb teenagers. The past usually sticks with you. I was a tired, skinny scruff when I was little. I still am. Namine was a passionate, emotional girl when she was little. She still is. The strange thing is, we've become more foolish. Why is that?

I mean, we were never especially obedient children. We would lie, occasionally. But we never did anything stupid. We never burned ants, or ate garbage or anything.

And now… what the fuck are we doing? I mean, we started some drugs relatively early on… I started smoking a couple years ago. And then of course all the sex was saved for this.

Blaming it on hormones grosses me out. Blaming it on personal choice grosses me out. It was just a very animalistic action – some sexual barrier breaks within you, at one point, and we happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, goading each other on.

"It might be considered our personal obligation to clean up our own mess." I mumble.

"I don't think I can. I don't even know if I can try. It might affect my brain."

"Yeah, either way, we can't let this end in brain damage."

"More importantly, we can't let this get cleaned up by someone else."

"You mean all of our actions?"

"Yeah. And your mattress, if that's what you mean."

Luckily, nothing penetrated the mattress cover. Namine's wearing pajamas, watching television. The sheets from the kitchen are now in the washer.

"Do you even know how to do laundry?" She calls.

"Kind of! Don't you patronize me, kid. I bet you couldn't crack an egg."

"… How are we still alive?"

"Think of Ono and Lennon. It's a hibernation sort of thing." I pause for a moment. "For peace or whatever."

She makes a disgusted noise from the living room.

"Ugh, I just pictured black-and-white nakedness."

"Yes, but it was for peace." I point out.

"I don't care what it was for – your fucking British Invasion obsession warped my mind. Every time I hear 'Norwegian Wood' I think of…"

"Johnny's - "

"Yeah."

"Poor thing." I mock sympathy, walking into the living room.

"Yeah, well, he was famous, and he knew people would be looking at it."

"His Norwegian - "

"Yeah, that."

" – wood. Haha."

"Hahaha."

… She laughs at bad Beatle's jokes. That's good for me, at least.

She sighs.

"I just hope he got most of what he wanted."

"Who, Lennon? He was filthy rich, I'm sure he was just fine."

"I was so sad when he died."

"You… you weren't born yet."

"Yeah, well, still."

"But his early death kind of made him more legendary, don'tcha think?" I ask, kneeling in front of the couch, thankful for something finally to talk avidly about.

"I dunno. He… seemed like kind of a jerk."

"Huh?" The Walrus? A jerk? Is she insane?

"I don't know. Cynthia Powell. Yeah."

"What about her?"

"He was mean to her."

And then I remember all that about Paul, and 'Hey Jude.' What that was all about.

"You mean their son?" I ask quietly.

"Yeah. You just don't do that sort of thing, it doesn't seem right." She sighed.

… But I guess I'll never know. I'm not going to argue with good songwriting. I'll let Namine's mind do whatever it pleases. If she prefers to hate on Lennon, let her do it, I suppose. I can't make her stop whatever she sets her mind to.

"Hey, let's try smoking tea in a pipe."