Vater is German for Dad/Daddy/Father.
Mutti is German for Mom/Mommy/Mother.
Disclaimer: Don't own.
Chapter 1: The Day You Came Back
Coming out of the school, Namine peered through the hundreds of people. She wasn't quite sure who she was looking for, or where she was going. She just kept looking around... for someone.
This was the way that it had been for the last four years. Namine, now fifteen, was still as shy as a girl could ever be. She never spoke or raised her hand in class, and spent her days in her soltiude either drawing, or staring out the window. She wasn't quite sure what she was looking for until she saw it.
There, she thought as she looked over by the sidewalk. It was him... her father. He had finally come home... Namine smiled, and ran towards the brunette. Just as soon as she was close enough to touch him...
He disappeared.
Namine dropped to her knees as a few tears slipped down her cheeks. When was her father going to come home? She didn't like to be so emotional in public... but how was she to stop her own feelings?
She was illusional. She knew it, everyone else knew it, and most people had just considered her to be crazy. Which was why she had no friends.
She missed her father more than anyone could have ever imagined- she saw him everywhere that she looked, but everytime that she would get close enough to reach out for him, he disappeared, as quickly as he had been seen.
Everything had gone wrong since he had left. The Nazis had passed laws beyond all of the Jews' wildest imaginations. They were now forced to wear the Star of David on all of their outer clothing, pointing out to the world who was a Jew and who wasn't. Now, these laws made the Jews seem more like caged birds than ever before. And faster than ever before, people were disappearing, one by one, family by family, home by home. It was quite frightening to see- one day, the person who sat next to you would be there, and then the next, they would be gone- forever.
Namine couldn't understand it- nor had she bothered to try to. Because all she wanted, more than ever, was to see Sora again, even if it was just for a few brief moments. Somehow, her mind allowed her to do so, in a way.
She walked home dejectedly, eyes scanning the sidewalk. As much as her mother told her to stop being so meek, she couldn't help it. All thoughts of being stronger only brought back more memories of her father.
He had always been the one who stood up for her, and he had always been the one who had done everything in his power for her happiness. Although her mother had done these things as well, their relationship was nowhere near being as strong as Sora and Namine's. Even now, after her father left, they seemed to have drifted apart more than ever.
She saw a few drops of water hit the ground, leaving dark spots on the sidewalk. Funny... she thought to herself, and looked at the sky. It's not raining.
Then she had realized that, once again, she was crying. She was crying from the memories of her father, and crying because of the well known fact to everyone that he may never come back. After all, it's been four years... she reasoned with herself, No one comes back untouched after four years.
"HALT!" The sharp words of a German officer stung her ears, nearly scaring her out of her skin.
Looking down, she said nothing, and stopped walking. As much as her mother liked to mouth these men off behind their backs, she couldn't bring herself to even speak to them. Their cold glares and pressed uniforms were already enough to make Namine quiver. Add in the gun, which caused her to almost become petrified.
"Where do you think you're going?" His voice was rough and scratchy.
"Home." Namine mummbled.
"SPEAK UP!"
"I'm going home," Namine spoke in a slightly louder tone.
"And where is your home?" He asked accusingly.
Namine wasn't sure wheth to answer him or not. She just stood there, silently.
"ANSWER ME!" His cold words told her that she had to speak.
"Just down the road... in that apartment building." She pointed to it, since there was no use in lying.
"Okay." The officer frowned.
Still trembling, Namine started to walk again, towards her home.
Before she could have taken five steps, the officer spoke again. "I didn't say you could leave yet."
She froze. The officer then took another look at her, and grumbled. "Go."
Shaking, she walked towards the building until he was out of sight. The conversation with the officer just then was one of the scariest momments of her life. Never had an officer stopped her on the way home before, and never had one spoken so harshly to her. The ones that she had seen standing around had their mouth formed into a permanent straight line, looking lifeless, never speaking to any passerbys, whether they were Jewish or not.
She continued to tremble as she made her way up the stairs of her apartment building. She had been shaking so fiercely by the time she had reached her door that she could barely turn the handle.
"Mutti?" She heard her own voice echo.
She suddenly became worried, and realized that her mother had almost never left the door unlocked when she was home alone. What had gone wrong? "Mutti!" She called again for her mother, as she timidly walked deeper into the apartment.
There was no answer this time, not even an echo.
Namine felt a chill go up her spine. What had gone wrong today? She continued to creep around the house, into the empty living room and kitchen. There was nobody- although it looked like her mother had been working hard today. There were papers all over the kitchen table. Namine hurried over to them, only to see a bunch of forms and other things that had were of no matter to her. She had hoped that there would be a note of some sort, saying why she was out and why the door was unlocked.
Maybe her mother was just being forgetful again. Maybe she had stepped out of the house, not knowing when she would come back, or planning to come back before she would be home. And maybe she also just forgot to lock the door on her way out.
But... she thought, why would her mother have the need to go out? They had bought all of the groceries that their rations allowed them to, and there was nothing else that they needed. Her mother was not one to go out just for a breath of fresh air.
Namine had suddenly become worried again, the way she always was when her mother left her at home. Although it was an immature fear of staying home alone, Namine had not been able to outgrow it since Sora had left.
She silently walked to her room, not daring to make even the slightest peep. There was no sound in the house, and she would not be the one to break the it.
As she had for the past four years, the first thing that she gave a second glance to everytime she ever entered was the sketch. The sketch of Sora that she had so hastily drew the day that he left. Although her drawing skills had improved since then, her memory had fazed a bit. The only thing image she could fall back on to remember her father was the sketch. She gazed at his face, almost smiling. At least she could remember what he looked like.
A crash broke the silence of the house. Namine jumped in shock, suddenly realizing that she was not alone. Could her mother be back? She wanted to go towards the sound to see what was going on, but there was something stopping her. Her intuition told her that it was not her mother who made the crash, and her body refused to move.
"There's supposedly a girl here, too..." She heard a gruff male's voice.
There was no other voice. He must have been alone, and speaking to himself. Namine still sat frozen on her bed. What was she supposed to do if an intruder came in? She looked around nervously, trying to remember what Kairi had told her.
Until the door flung open to reveal an angry man in an SS uniform. There was something familiar about his face...
She squinted at the man, just to make sure that her assumptions were correct.
The man glared back at Namine, timidly sitting on her bed, examining him. He had bright blue eyes with dirty, messy blonde hair... she looked down at the picture of Sora in her lap. She was right. She had to be. He looked just liked him.
She silently prayed that this situation wasn't just another illusion in her mind. She continued to stare at him.
"You're coming with me." He suddenly grabbed her wrist tightly, ready to drag her out of the room.
The way that he gripped her hurt. Her father had never done this to her... what had happened to him the four years that he was gone?
"Vater? Is that you?" She looked at him with loving eyes, ignoring the pain that he was causing her.
"Who the hell do you think you're talking to?" His words stung harder and hurt more than the ones of the uniformed Nazi on the street.
Shaking, she held out the picture that she had drew towards him. The man looked at it and frowned deeper. "Who is this?"
"You, Vater."
"I'm not you Vater." He firmly told her, setting the paper aside. "Now come with me, or I'll force you to."
How had her father suddenly become so cruel? He always spoke in a soft tone to her, and had always looked at her with loving eyes. Now, he was just giving her cold, hard glares, and almost shouting at her. She picked up the paper again, to examine the two mens' faces.
"Wait..." she mummbled. "Where's Mutti?"
"Your Mutti's gone. Just like your Vater."
She refused to accept that the man in front of her was not her father. "Where are you taking me?"
"That's none of your business."
She looked at him with big, sad eyes. She used to use those eyes to get what she wanted from her father, but all she wanted now was for him to stop hurting her, to stop lying to her. She could no longer feel her hand. "Who... who are you, then?"
The man sighed. He thought that the girl would be easy to coax, but apparently, she had the same will of staying as her mother did. "I'm..." he paused, "Roxas." There was no way that he was going to let his full name slip out. Things were already getting more personal than he had wished for. All he was told to do was to get the two women of the family into the ghetto before the next train would be leaving.
"No..." Namine felt a tear trickle down her face. "You can't be anyone other than my father. You look just like him! STOP LYING TO ME!" With a surprising confidence, she shoved the picture in front of his face.
Roxas looked at it in disgust. Although the man did look quite like him, the girl was just plain illusioned. He had never seen her before in his life, and there was no way that she had just sketched him while he was snooping around their apartment. And there was no way that he was her father, with her being fifteen and him only twenty.
How was he going to coax her out, now? The other SS were waiting outside for him, most likely growing impatient. The girl looked at him with big, watery eyes, all he could do was scoff in the nausea of her tears. "Just come." He was going to have to revert to force now.
Namine saw the man look at her with a softer face after he took a closer look at the picture. He WAS her father, and he was, most likely, going to take her someplace where she'd be happy... right?
But somehow, as she tried to get up, her body wouldn't go. There was something telling her that the man in front of her was not her father, just someone who looked like him and was going to kidnap her while her mother was out. And the same voice was telling her not to trust him.
"Let's GO." He pulled her up off the bed with his full strength, causing her to let out a small scream for the pain in her arm. He continued to drag her through her home, and out of the apartment.
"Stop... stop..." she moaned. "Vater..."
"I'm NOT your Vater. Stop believing that I am." He shouted at her. Why had she put up such a fight over a topic as silly as to who was her father?
"You are..." she insisted, still gripping the sheet of paper in her hand and holding it out for Roxas to see.
By this time, Roxas had enough of the nonsense that the illusional girl was babbling of. "No." He snatched the paper out of Namine's hand and tore the sheet into shreds. Seeing that happen, plently of tears had rolled out of her eyes. He smirked, knowing he had won. "Now that that's settled, you're coming with me."
Namine continued to sob, with a slight refusal to leave, and a refusal to believe that Roxas was not her father.
And as he watched her cry, he felt himself soften up. And even though he had become almost heartless from being trained as an SS, there was something about the girls tears that almost made him want to comfort her. Almost. He mentally kicked himself for letting his barrier fall so easily. But then, he reasoned with himself, it wasn't every day that someone insisted he was their father.
He continued to drag her down the stairs to a large group of people who were also wearing stars on their clothes- the other Jews in the neighborhood. She tried to stay close to Roxas, who had let go of her wrist then and went to talk to the other uniformed officers. When he realized she was following him, he shoved her towards the growing crowd of people, muttering, "Stupid girl."
As Namine looked into the growing crowd, she wondered, Where were they all going to be sent?