-.Sketchbook.-

"Blue"

x. Whispers o Sea o Ice o Secrets o Foetal Position o Watching .x

-x-x-x-

It was official: Yuffie looked like a drowned rat. Her outfit was damp and toned down several shades due to the water soaking into the materials like a sponge. Her hair was wet and exploded in tendrils across her face, mascara elongating her eyelashes melting to pool around her eyes so they bore a disturbing resemblance to gaping sockets. Her spine was laced with prickles of cold, making her tiny form shiver like a frail leaf being blown in the wind. It didn't matter how much sunlight pierced through the shrouds of clouds – Yuffie was still feeling frozen.

"What happened to you?" asked Naminé in her light voice that barely managed to beat away the shrieks of the sea air as it reached the assembled teen's ears. Kairi noted, much to her amusement, that the girl had a faint pink flush on her cheeks, as if rose-petals had opened up inside her skin. She was tugging at the hem of her dress self-consciously, shooting subtle glances at Axel. Using the wonders of feminine instinct, Kairi noted down Naminé's odd movements and deduced that she had Axel had probably been interrupted doing something they probably wouldn't have been doing under adult supervision. Well, the hickeys on her neck were also making it a little bit obvious – but boys didn't notice subtle things like that.

It was all Sora's fault because he had been the one who had distracted Axel and Naminé. The wannabe-ninja had screamed bloody murder after his retreating figure, the brunette vaulting over the make-shift sea-side shack screaming something about murdering Yuffie. Of course, Yuffie was a far cry away from a corpse lying sombrely in a coffin, but she did look amazingly crappy. Anyway, listening to demonic boy scream about the forced of evil really didn't help a romantic mood flower.

"Maybe you should ask Sora dearest," spat the irritable girl, her voice becoming oddly distorted with the consistent chattering of her pearly whites. She cast an accusatory eye running with what seemed to be midnight tears at the boy who looked a little bit sheepish, hands behind in back in what appeared to be a casual pose. He was embarrassed over the whole misunderstanding that Yuffie was the prince of darkness, trying to mask that fact by laughing nervously.

Riku sniggered slightly, eyeing Yuffie up and down in a sceptical way, as if admiring a picture hanging in an art gallery. "Well…" he said, starting to critique her appearance, not treating her as a girl but as a stupid jumble of colours arranged in such a way it was impossible to tease a meaning out of. "I can easily see why he might mistake you for a sea-monster. I mean, you're hair is a mess, and it looks like the corners around your eyes are decaying…"

Shooting Riku a crushing look with her decaying eyes, Yuffie swayed aimlessly on the spot. Maybe she was going to accompany that scary look with some words colder than how she felt, but the effect was spoiled somewhat when a loud cough parted her lips instead of a bitchy comment.

"Poor Yuff. That doesn't give you guys the right to be so … mean!" exclaimed Naminé, trying to engage herself back into conversation, trying to bat away any suspicions that she and Axel had been doing anything than just 'talking' in a friendly, civilised manner.

She still kept self-consciously tugging at the hem of her dress, Kairi noted, a small smirk lifting her lips up. Oh, she was too sweet and angelic for her own good. A bit like Sora, really, but with some obvious differences her little white dress was helping to outline.

"Maybe we should get Yuffie back h…" Axel stared, but the word 'home' snagged his throat and stubbornly remained there as a firm, un-moveable object that choked him. It wasn't like him to ever really feel depressed about the whole string of events no matter how unpleasant they were, but after Naminé slicing her own heart open with a butcher knife and handing him all the memories of her home to him, he felt bad. She was a lucky girl – she had some memories to hang on to, but all Axel had was an empty gap because he didn't have a home. At least, not anymore… "Maybe we should get Yuffie back," he finished off, swallowing down the horrible taste the word 'home' brought with it, refusing to let it spill from his mouth.

"Yes, yes we should," concluded the dark-haired girl, shooting a murderous look at Sora. It was warning enough that he wouldn't be safe in his make-shift bed at night, as Yuffie had obviously hidden a knife in Sora's toy moogle or something just as sinister and wouldn't fail to brandish it at him at the darkest hour.

Sora shuddered. She was always watching…

o.x.o

"Did you have a nice day, sugar-lump?" asked Yuna in a shaking voice, adjusting the strands of her brunette hair that fell in an elegant and almost sad way around her gaunt face. Features were darkened and over-cast; once vibrant eyes set deeply into the back of her head like dull, lustreless marbles; cheekbones taught as the skin stretched around them like plastic wrappings decorated with bruises. She was complete mess. Naminé wondered why her battery hadn't been completely sapped of juice yet, what small reserve of power she was managing to scrounge up to keep on going.

It didn't look like re-charging her was an option.

"Yeah … It was okay," replied Naminé, deciding not to comment on the numerous imperfections hanging around the young woman like a death-march. Shuyin was like the grim reaper, as he held on to Yuna's hand and led her down to an open grave. The scent of death was strewn all around the house, in the dark colour schemes and beer bottles scattered across the table and the rusting old kitchen appliances kicked into the available corners, linoleum floor tiles cracked and caked with dust and uninviting splatters of old food. "Do you want me to help you?" she asked in her soft, musical voice, indicating the pot of vibrant red liquid simmering on the stove. It was popping and bubbling in a most uninviting way, like stewing blood.

"No, its fine," reassured Yuna, raising her wooden spoon lightly coated in the red mixture. It was if the woman's open cuts had bled onto all the cooking equipment and leaked into the pot. "You go upstairs and do whatever teenagers do…"

"Alright, mum…" Naminé reluctantly agreed with her plans. There was so much left un-said in her family, so many loose ends that were getting twisted firmly, leading up the day where everything would fall apart. Naminé could have commented on the new bruises forming in mould-like patterns along Yuna's thin arms, but she didn't. Yuna could have asked about the marks on Naminé's neck that obviously pointed out she hadn't been doing something she should have been, but she didn't. Neither wanting to offend the other, Naminé slinked out of the door and closed it, her presence being no longer felt in the room.

Save for the un-answered questions that had never been spoken drifting lightly in the breeze as a bitter reminder to the fact they weren't a proper family and probably never would be.

And so the days drifted by in the ways days did, what with Naminé staying locked up in her room for greater portions of the day hidden in her fantasies outlined in the paper. She would only come down every once in a while to forage for food, noting new bruises decorating Yuna's face like crude tattoos. She kept her door closed, but that didn't mean she couldn't block out the truth.

It started to reflect in her pieces of art, as the great beauties slowly became twisted into horrible monsters she couldn't control. The screams and shouts, blood and bruises slowly became incorporated within her pictures, as they all became laced with the aspects of real life she'd tried so hard to ignore. All the doors in Naminé's world were closed so she could keep away anything that might try to hurt her, but she couldn't stop over-hearing the things beyond the barriers.

For instance, when she ever dared expose herself to sunlight it seemed to burn her and crack through her pale skin, poisoning her insides. When she tried to work up some inspiration and hide from the monsters plaguing her sketches she'd hear the girls like Olette and Selphie casually inject her name into conversation, throwing it around loosely without much heed to the fact it was hurting the blonde girl. And so the monsters continued to follow her wherever she went, until she threw down her pencil in distress and buried her head under her pillow and tried to summon up tears that wouldn't come because she'd cried them all a long time ago.

The fluffy pillow encasing her ears gently couldn't stop reality swirling around her in a vortex, as she hid in foetal position trying to fool herself that everything was alright.

Even if she could fool herself, she couldn't fool the monsters. They knew how weak she was and took advantage of it, dragging her down into her own grave, filling her mouth with soil so she couldn't even scream. Even if she did, nobody would hear her.

Apart from maybe him.

o.x.o

It started out innocently enough, as most things do. She just wanted to go and find somebody to drown her sorrows in, and as Yuna was gone she wouldn't question it. Naminé desperately wanted somebody who cared and understood her. It was kind of strange, really – she'd known Roxas for a great portion of her life, and Axel only a few days. But she felt like she could relate far more to the red-head. He wasn't joined at the hip with a gang of giggling girls and Blitzball-obsessed boys who were held in higher priority than her. Deep down she felt they had this strong bond that her and Roxas could never have even if all the Olettes of the world were to suddenly drop down dead so instantly she was the only friend he had left. He didn't understand her, not like Axel did.

She had her lucky charm stowed away in her pocket, the constant reminder of it being there coming from the pointed edges digging into her thighs at every step. The nightmares were locked up in the four corners of her room, ready to strangle her as a twisted welcome back into their embrace when she got home. But it wasn't a home. She remembered that old saying, about 'home being where the heart is'. It was a little corny, but it retained some sense of truth – her home was wherever her heart considered a sanctuary, and it couldn't be based anywhere near Shuyin because he was the source of the darkness that oozed its liquid black tentacles around her. Her true home appeared to be with …

Axel?

Naminé hummed gently, a sweet little melody featured around the words 'sanctuary'. However, her sweet blue eyes and sweet blue hair and sweet little white dress fitted around her innocently cute little figure had no place amongst the large buildings that loomed around her, luring her in like a Venus fly trap.

She'd abandoned the streets she was normally restricted to, the ones that were lined with candy-cotton houses in neat little rows and cobbled pathways. It retained that jumbled sense, but all the buildings were clustered around each other, all vying for space as they roughly stabbed the clear blue sky and mutated the horizon.

It was a vast, confusing metropolis, and Naminé was started to get faintly worried. She was a slim, slight, petite little girl and was acutely aware of the accusatory eyes cast upon her as she made her uneasy way around. These people didn't belong in Destiny Islands any more than the large buildings did, the ones dubbed outcasts and shunned by the locals. However, in that way she supposed they were perfectly matched, as she had never really been accepted. Yet, something in their glares told her they weren't supposed to mix.

It was truly bizarre, as every few seconds her blue eyes would snag on certain people she knew, certain drawings that owned a place in her sketchbook. She didn't know everybody, but knew half of the population, at least.

And they didn't exactly seem to want to know her.

She remembered something Yuffie had told her in one of her hyper hazes of conversation a few days ago. Something about being situated in a flat B, as the happy words that were oddly distorted due to the mouthful of cake she had been eating at the time resonated within her brain, guiding her forwards to one of the buildings. They all looked exactly the same, apart from the fact the outsides were studded with cheap, golden letters of the alphabet, ranging all the way from A to Z in an imposing circle. Naminé idly wondered how they would categorize the next load of flats that were going to be constructed. By types of fruit? She didn't think people would be vying to be placed in a building named 'flat banana', apart from the insane people, like Yuffie.

Her pace loosely changing to a run, she made her way towards the flat. She wasn't exactly aware of it at the time, but she regarded the building somewhat as her sanctuary and was eager to barrel her way inside and escape the nightmares that failed to leave her alone.

x.o.x

Naminé was seated on a mattress that appeared to have been idly kicked into the corner of the very cramped room, using a few various pillows as arm rests. She had thought her house was dump, but this room took the biscuit. Hell, it took the entire cake. It was scented with human body odour from all the beings being cramped up in the small, confined space with only one shower that probably wasn't even working anymore due to over-use. The walls were stained and the faint odour of mould wafted from the trash can, and Naminé didn't really want to poke around in the contents of it to find out exactly what was giving off the strong smell. Light snoring was coming from a corner of the room, where Yuffie, like the bin, appeared to be kicked into one of the spare spaces, shivering with a duvet wrapped around her hap-hazardly as she flailed her arms around in a flu-induced nightmare.

Despite the chaotic state around her, Naminé found she liked this place. She played around with one of the random stuffed toys scattered across the mattress. It was warm and cosy.

And small and messy, but she could over-look that fact.

According to a few scattered conversations with Axel, from the information she'd gleaned Yuffie was sick due to her fall into the sea a few days ago because she had a crappy immune system or something, and he had been trusted to stay and take care of her. Their parents claimed to be out at another one of those meetings about the state of the buildings and how they needed to be relocated somewhere bigger, and Sora, Kairi and Riku found it too depressing to be stuck in a cramped environment without a CD player to drown out Yuffie's snoring and mutterings about 'wanting the red lollipop'.

Axel had also, in turn, asked her a few questions, like what she was doing there, not seeming to be especially unhappy about it. She told him it wasn't exactly hard to find all the flats where the new people had been located, and Yuffie had told her where to go if she ever wanted to visit a while back whilst stuffing her mouth full of cake.

"So, Naminé, did ya come around here to check up on Yuffie about that whole concert thing you invited her to?" asked Axel in an off-hand way, but this simple statement made the blonde girl's eyes snap open into a surprised expression. She had completely forgotten – and she had no idea Axel had been listening in on her conversation with Yuffie. "Cause I doubt she'd be able to go now…"

As if on cue, Yuffie mumbled something incoherently in her sleep that sounded a lot like 'don't let the waffles steal the toaster!' as she squirmed around under her duvet like a maggot.

"I guess so," said Naminé lightly, a small smile spreading across her innocent features. It was a real smile, not one of the half-grimace things that were shadowed with nightmares. She never even smiled properly around Roxas, leading the boy to believe her mouth muscles were broken or something. However, around Axel she acted like a normal girl, like how she felt she should be. Almost as if he linked her back to some old personality she'd left behind a long time ago, the pieces of personality that were stained on the pages of her sketchbook. "Hey, Axel? You're not hinting at something, are you?"

Axel looked down at the top of her head, blonde hair shining like waterfall cascading around her shoulders. The older boy was stretched across one of the beds, henceforth on a higher perch than Naminé.

"No, I'm not hinting at anything. But I doubt Sora would be a good person to invite to a concert with all the screaming people and coloured lights and whatnot. And you can't go alone, anything could happen…"

"Axel. You depress me. You think I don't have any other friends besides you guys?" asked Naminé with a playful tone lacing through her voice, but a horrible thought struck her. It was sort of true…

"Yeah, but none of your friends are as special as me, right?" he asked her softly, threading his fingers thorough her blonde hair, coaxing her onto the bed so she now claimed a place next to him. She'd dragged one of the random stuffed toys along with her, and had it sat neatly on her lap. "I mean, I'm the only one you'd feel comfy doing this with, right?" he asked her imploringly, spinning her around and crashing their lips together.

The stuffed toy rolled off Naminé's lap to sit proudly on the mattress below like a king on a throne, glassy eyes staring up to survey the two teenagers kissing above him, becoming joined by the girl's good luck charm a few seconds later as it slipped from her pocket.

Naminé felt a bit like the pieces of her heart that had been missing were being handed to her on a silver platter, as she attempted to glue them back together.

o.x.o

"Yuna…?" asked the hesitant voice of the woman, staring into her eyes seeping tears like a broken tap. "Y-Yunie?" she tried again, stumbling over the old child-hood nickname. How long had it been since the brunette had been called that? "You've got to pull it together, girl."

"How can I? Look at what I found?" asked Yuna, her voice speared through her sobs as she showed the dark-haired woman the fistful of papers. All of them sketches, a tall boy and petite girl as the main focus of all of them, the doodles soaked with tears. "I found them when cleaning her room… I didn't realise how bad this had all gotten… It's all falling apart," she cried, as her companion's expression stretched into the look one might wear at a funeral as she flipped through the pictures.

"Naminé's getting older now, huh?" asked the woman, trying to replace the dull look on her face with a shaking smile. It didn't work, it just made her mouth look broken and horribly lop-sided. The old chant rung through her head as she set the papers aside onto a conveniently placed table. Naminé and Axel, sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G. God, this was all getting so complicated. It wasn't meant to be this way. They weren't even meant to see each other, for Yuna's health. Yuna's life was at stake because of all these new people barging in, and she knew she was included in that equation. None of them were meant to be there.

"She's getting too old! Why couldn't she stay a cute little kid forever?"

"She was a little kid last time I saw her… Fancy that…" hummed the woman gently, observing the woman crying before her, feeling horrible because it was partly all her fault. "Remember her with her little bunches and sticky-outy feet?"

"God… All this was bad before, but now it's getting even worse because of all the new people. He won't leave me alone anymore – he's like a nightmare! And the only way I can wake up is to drop down dead. I'll tell God to reserve a cloud next to me when I get there," sobbed Yuna, a twisted smile crossing her face. Her eyes were framed with red and she looked like a china doll.

"Don't talk nonsense stuff like that, Yunie. It'll all be alright. You'll just have to keep them away from each other, that's all. Or at least make sure he doesn't find out."

"It's not nonsense, it's sense, Tiffy! And how long will it be until you can go back? A few years!"

"Maybe it'll only be a few months if they really work hard to get everything fixed and sorted again…"

"But then again, maybe I don't want you to leave. You were always my best friend…"

"Yunie…" said the woman known as 'Tiffy', in the warning voice she always used when the bloody kids wouldn't do as she commanded. "You can't start that again. What about Shuyin? We have to tread carefully…"

A rebellious look shone in Yuna's eyes, and she laughed softly. She seemed so much more animated. "Screw being careful. It doesn't matter if I die anyway – I don't have anything to live for." She stared intently at the other woman's face, before pulling it close enough to hers to kiss those inviting lips softly.

Tifa knew she should have pulled away. But she didn't.

This was getting really complicated…

-x-x-x-

A/N: This is a sort of short chapter but I like it… Yay. The plot may seem all confusing now but all will be revealed. Hopefully. So, next chapter will be the concert, where INTERESTING stuff will happen . Thankies for all your reviews! Three reviews for another chapter, please?

--Skitts x x x