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Notes/Disclaimer: Alternative title: "Melt Away." SPOILERS FOR KHII. IF YOU DON'T WANT TO BE SPOILED, DON'T READ. Slash: implied Riku/Sora one-sided, implied Axel/Roxas one-sided. But light. Not too much to worry about. Also: depressing. Also: I don't own KHII. If you don't know who does and you're still reading this, then you're retahded.
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Where was he? Dead? Was that possible? Where did nobodies go when they died? They had no souls, no hearts, nothing to take with them to an afterlife. Where did the nobodies go? Shouldn't they just fade away? So where was he? Was this oblivion?
But it couldn't be, because he felt a fleeting presence on the edge of his consciousness. Something that felt oddly familiar. He looked down, only it wasn't looking down because he didn't have a head or eyes to look down with and saw a bright white thread clutched with death-like intensity in his fist, only he didn't have a fist because he had no hand to make one, no fingers to curl.
But that thread, that wasn't what was so familiar. No, it was something else. The flashing white thread he held far too tightly to feel. This presence was ephemeral, drifting around him. And it wasn't familiar, really, now that he thought about it, so much as it was... sympathetic. The same. It felt like himself. All nobodies were missing their hearts. Could this be his own soul, lost and wandering?
Who are you?
For a moment he thought he had asked the question, but he had not. The question simply existed. It was not his. And if he had not asked it, then it seemed only logical to answer it. He opened his mouth (only he had no mouth to open, no tongue to speak), but paused.
I don't... I don't know... he said, or perhaps only thought, or perhaps only felt.
The strange, wraith-like presence brushed against his mind once again, closer this time. I feel... connected to you. Why?
I don't know, he whispered again, wishing that he could understand. I don't know anything. Who are you?
There was a pause. He wondered if he was talking to himself, or to the void, or if that was the same thing after all. Maybe these questions were simply his own echo.
But then the reply came. I can show you, I think. I feel you in my mind. I can show you my memories. Maybe that will help you remember?
Perhaps... He was frightened, although he did not know why. No, he knew. He did not want to be lost. He was so afraid of losing himself, drifting away into this darkness, hundreds of thousands of particles of himself scattered on the black, non-existant wind of the void. He looked down again at the bright white thread that he clutched desperately. Somehow, it was keeping him anchored. He did not clutch it more tightly only because he could not. It was already so embedded within him that he wasn't sure he could have let it go if he tried.
Show me, he said.
A bright light shone on the horizon, and suddenly there was no void at all, but a pristine white beach, swaying palms, a cool salty breeze that kissed his face. He looked around, but it was not him looking around. It was the weilder of the memories, turning his head. Silver hair fell into his eyes, hiding his gaze from others.
The gaze rested on one in particular. A boy. Sharp, brown hair spiked messily, and somehow very familiar in a way he could not understand. The memory weilder watched, silently, from his perch on the smooth bark of a paopu palm. The spikey-haired boy ran forward, away from the memory-weilder, and embraced a small, cute girl with hair the color of embers. The watcher felt pain in his heart, but it was not his own pain. It was the memory-weilder's pain. It couldn't be his own, of course, because he had no heart. Nobodies had no hearts, of course.
What was a nobody?
You love that boy, the watcher said.
Yes, said the memory-weilder.
I don't understand.
It's love, said the memory-weilder. It is not meant to be understood. Only felt.
Feeling... the lack of feeling, that's what made a nobody. All a nobody could ever understand was emptiness, the sensation of being hollow, and the intense pain and loneliness of missing a part of yourself. That was a nobody. Except... except dimly, there was the image, not an image but a sensation of a person who stopped that lonely feeling. There was someone, someone, someone who made that emptiness go away. Who could make him feel normal, whole, content. Make him feel.
Is that love?
It sounds like love, came the other voice.
Show me more.
A glass pod, like a blossoming flower, and the brown-haired boy encased inside. A pale hand resting on the glass, the sensation of its cool surface on his forehead as he leaned against it. A desperate longing ache in his heart. And desire too, desire to do something, anything, to bring the light back into those eyes, yield their cool blue depths. Anything for a bright, blinding smile.
And then a different hand pressed against the glass, but still his own. Darker, larger. And a feeling of suffocating in pain and darkness.
I sacrificed myself for him, said the voice. All for him. For him I would have faded away forever.
That feeling was similar. He could remember his own, dim version of the same. He could feel the want, the desire to see that person smile one more time. His was so pale compared to the memory-weilder, but for a nobody, it was more emotion than he had ever felt before.
But he is not yours.
No. The memory disappeared. He will never be mine. Again, he saw the boy embracing the small girl, felt the heart that was not his heart twist with grief and envy, but also with a profound, despairing acceptance. There was resignation. It was not that he was content simply to watch, but that he was incapable of tearing himself away. He was resigned to his fate, knowing he could not leave, hurting himself by staying, but preferring that hurt to the pain he would inflict upon the boy by confessing his own feelings. There was a desperate need for the boy to be happy with that girl, for if he was not, and all his sacrifice was for naught, then he would go mad.
You stay like this? the watcher asked incredulously. You remain, watching, always in such pain? Why? Why can you not move on?
Because I love, said the memory-weilder. Because I am weak, and I cannot let him go. Because he needs me, in his own way, and the littlest bit of pleasure I can give him is worth all my pain and suffering.
No, the watcher thought, that was wrong. It wasn't right, to be like that. It wasn't right, to resign yourself to misery forever. To chain yourself to a hopeless cause, simply because you lacked the will to release it.
He looked down again, and saw the thread, and he followed it, feeling the memory-weilder following it as well, they both followed it into the memory, saw where it led. Their minds followed the string like a path to its final end in the heart of the boy.
No! He would not be like this familiar stranger, this memory-weilder. He could not. He had no heart to begin with, could not understand emotions. Such intense, constant pain, knowing that he could do nothing but watch his love be happy with another, would drive him slowly to madness. He looked down at the thread. He looked up at the boy.
And for a moment, he did not see the boy. For a moment, he saw another, saw shorter, lighter hair, a sarcastic, cynical smile, a preoccupied gaze, and the same rare, depthless blue eyes, eyes that made him feel, that had pierced his non-existant heart with twin arrows of love and pain, more emotion than he was ever meant to bear. He saw those eyes turn towards him, and look through him.
I cannot, he said. I am not strong enough to be that weak.
He looked down at his tightly-clenched fist and released it. It was startlingly easy, like the first gasp of air of a drowning man as he breaches the water's surface. Azure blue eyes stared into his non-existant soul, the last memory before he drifted apart as dust on the wind.
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