Acts of Kindness
Chain links fall to the floor, sink into darkness, one two three separated and never coming back. Cid and Yuffie and Leon have just found more important things to do with their time than to remember a short cheerful boy.
Naminé tugs on the chain of Sora's memories, fingers delicately wrapped around it, and almost manages to break the fourth link. Aerith will be harder to break, she thinks, because her memories are wrapped up with her own second sense.
She touches her chest, the hollow spot where she can almost feel the fluttering of a heartbeat that isn't hers.
-
Nobodies are different. They cannot feel emotion. They have no heart.
Naminé is different. She has a Somebody; she shares a Somebody with somebody else. With every chain link she breaks, she feels something in her far-away heart breaking, too. It's like waking up from a dream, and forgetting everything you dreamt.
-
Naminé used to love coloured pencils. She could draw so many details with them, thin lines, thicker shadows. They blended beautifully. Watercolors were beautiful, too, how all you needed was a little bit of paint and a lot of water for the colour to splash onto the page. She had pastels, once, but they smeared all over her paper and fingertips and dress, smudging together into black shadows, and she hid them underneath her bed.
She still has some supplies left, a box of materials that she snuck out of Castle Oblivion. But she doesn't use them anymore.
She and Riku went to Twilight Town, for DiZ. Crayons, he pointed out, as they walked by the streets of Station Heights, I used to have those when I was a kid, and he bought them for her.
She draws Destiny Islands first, as the bright sandy shores of the play island leave her mind. For each link she breaks, there is a picture to draw. Sometimes she gets it out on paper on time, quick lines and blocky colours making just enough of a shape to be recognizable. Sometimes she doesn't. She can't remember anymore.
Sora doesn't wake up.
-
Roxas looks afraid, as he runs from The World That Never Was and away from the Heartless that pursue him. Little by little, DiZ covers up his memory with school days and Struggle fights and people he has never really met, new scenes flashing on the monitor. Roxas doesn't want to forget. His expression becomes more and more worried with every new wave of dark shadows leaping at him, as every time the wave gives way to another sloppy lunge of a Struggler.
Naminé sits quietly and watches DiZ work until he orders her away, you're distracting me, send Riku in.
Dark black cloak running from dark waves of shadows bluepinkgreen fluorescent lights from the distant city shining through the pouring rain—
She tears off a piece of tape, tacking the drawing onto her wall. Roxas will have forgotten by now. Her drawing is rushed, crayon lines thick and confused. But the feeling is there. The emotion. She won't let him forget, not this, not ever.
-
Quickly, she tries to think of a plan. DiZ must know by now that she went to see Roxas. He could interrupt them at any time. Words would be useless.
She once gave Sora a memory of looking at her sketchbook when they were both very young. She didn't usually let anyone see it, but he was special, and she even drew him a picture of his very own.
The box of crayons, each one worn nearly to a stub, spills onto the table. Blue green brown red lines scribbled hastily onto the paper and—
(Later, after time has stopped, Roxas walks around the white room, examining all the pictures Naminé had drawn (something in him quietly protests: Didn't she draw better than this? How would he know, he reasons, and moves on.)
He sees Axel in the sharp black and red shape on the paper in the corner. The happy whirl of colours and childish expressions is Sora and his friends.
He leans over and sees a black cloak fleeing a black shadow in the night as the rain falls.
Roxas leaves.
Naminé is waiting.)
challenge: gestures
words: 707
notes: Alternate title: Why Naminé Uses Crayons To Draw With.
