-.Sketchbook.-

"Violet"

o. "Sounds like" vIoLeNcE.AnGeR.HaTe. x. Flowers in the rain .x Acceptance of pain .o

-x-x-x-

His words died on his lips, as he felt the cold metal edges of the object he held reverently in the palm of his hand. The disco lights shimmered around the surfaces as it smoothly changed colours, rainbows bouncing around the walls.

She forgot her lucky charm. Or rather, didn't forget it, but left it behind. He didn't have any doubt that she hadn't meant to, but it had fallen from her pocket when she ran and now he was in possession of it. And if he had previously had any doubts about going after her, they had all been erased from his mind.

The object was a link between them. He had to go after her to give her it back. He would've gone after her anyway, but this cemented it for him. He was meant to follow her, wasn't meant to let her run away – the charm told him that.

He wasn't superstitious and didn't believe in 'luck' and ducking when he saw black cats. But he believed there must have been something special about that metallic papou fruit, as it was trying to bind them together, wasn't going to let her make the biggest mistake of her life.

Wasn't going to let her leave everything behind. Was going to tie her back into the past she couldn't leave, because she was part of it just as much as he was.

o.x.o

"Roxas?" asked Selphie loosely, clicking her fingers light-heartedly to the music. The blond haired boy was envious that she could accomplish that simple action – he never managed to get the hang of it, no matter how many times she told him where to place his thumb and fingers. "What's wrong? You've got this sort of … haunted … look on your face…"

He was haunted, and a minor part of him was amazed that Selphie had registered this. She was never the most … perceptive … of people, never one to notice emotion as acutely as Naminé.

Why was he even comparing Naminé to Selphie, anyway, when they were so different?

"Roxas? Earth to Roxas," she said in a sing-song voice she always adapted when somebody ate the last square of chocolate and she felt it her task to call them a greedy pig. She waved her hands in front of the boy's large cornflower blue eyes, trying to force him back into reality. The reality that was people dancing around and music and flashing lights and Selphie. Selphie didn't like to be ignored, everything about her was big – hair, personality, vibrant clothes, mouth because she talked so much.

Naminé was small and shy, a limp little wallflower hanging in the corner, everything about her tiny and petite and blanched white.

He had seen her with that boy with bright red hair whilst he was Olette and Selphie and Tidus, amongst other moving bodies, laughing and having fun. But when his eyes fell upon his former friend, he noted she wasn't having fun. He knew her so well that every slight change in her behaviour caught his eye, commanded his attention. He knew when she was happy or sad from the curve of her mouth and her eyes and her stance. The odd habits she had, when she played with her hair when she was lost for words and fidgeted from left foot to right when she was scared.

Somehow, Naminé had been drifting apart from him, so when they were once united as a team there were only two separate islands. He was fine, he was connected to the mainland, had a strong chain of friends he could rely on, but Naminé was drifting out to sea. She was lost.

He was worried about her.

He'd seen her run away.

He wondered what she was thinking.

Why she'd run off.

Hell, he was her friend, wasn't he? Even if she was a stray island now - she'd attempted to sever their links of friendship after pretty much ignoring him for a few weeks – he could always wade in and try to get her.

Maybe that was why she preferred the red-head over him – shortly after Naminé had exited the hall, he had run off after her, he wasn't afraid to claim her back when she tried to float away from him, too.

He was going to prove he could be a good friend to her. She was deeper than Selphie, more interesting than Selphie, ultimately kinder and sweeter and nicer and better. Just plain better. She wasn't plain, she was unique, and maybe all the people who had been ignoring her for so long were the plain ones. She was different, and despite all the white she wore it just made her more colourful, because nobody else wore white. It made her stand out because she tried so hard to fit in and just kept getting it wrong. It was sort of ironic really.

She had run off – but he could always run after her. He had missed her gentle company, her dark sense of humour, her sweet reassurance that no matter how crappy life seemed she could always paint a better picture of it.

And Naminé was that perfect picture.

"Do you have a headache?" Selphie asked worriedly, sounding a little bit like an over-protective T.V. mother who wanted to smother her child in bubble-wrap and marshmallow hugs to keep all the germs and illnesses away. Roxas, however, was suddenly thankful that she'd unwittingly conjured up a grand excuse for him to slink away.

"Yeah … A bit …" he mumbled, grabbing his head and placing a slightly pained expression on his face.

Selphie fell for it hook, line and sinker.

Naminé would've have done – she knew Roxas too well to fall for two dimensional lies. She would have persisted in her quest to discover what was really wrong, and then tried to make it all better when she found out. But Naminé wasn't there anymore. She didn't want Roxas in her picture anymore – and that stung. Just a little.

Quite a lot, actually.

"Oh, poor Roxy!" He didn't tell Selphie he hated it when she called him that and always had done. "Is the music too loud?" That was a stupid thing to say – Lenne's music was hardly thumping heavy rock that shook the foundations of houses and made dads complain about it not 'being music, just bloody noise'. "The lights too bright?" Of course, Roxas thought sullenly – I'm blinded, Selphie, blinded, infact, are you sure you're Selphie and not Olette? Or Tidus?

"Ung … I think I've just got a head-cold. I think I'll be … okay … Owch…"

"Oh no! I can't let my bestest friend be ill at Lenne's concert! It's just not fair!" she proclaimed, throwing her arms up theatrically. She sounded like a little girl, mad because her parents wouldn't let her buy that Barbie Doll in full cheerleader regalia. To be honest, Selphie's whining was actually starting to make Roxas' head pound. Ever so slightly.

"... Maybe I should go home…"

"My poor baby! It must be reaallllly bad if you're willing to miss out on the best event of our teenage lives!" Selphie, as stated before, had a huge mouth and so was not the best equipped to handle somebody who had an alleged headache because she couldn't turn her volume down. And her volume was always LOUD. "Do you want me to walk you home?"

That was easy. "No … I don't want you to miss out on it because of me. I'll walk back, maybe the fresh air'll make me feel better."

Selphie frowned slightly, not wanting to give up on Roxas without a fight. But the current song suddenly changed, and her eyes lit up as it was obviously one of her favourites, and Roxas' head-ache was old, old news. She would rather get up and dance. How convenient.

"Well… Okay… Don't talk to any strangers."

"I won't."

"And don't talk to any strange men!"

"I won't, Selph…"

"And don't get into fist fights! Don't get your poorly ass kicked and head bashed in and your guts spilt all over the floor!"

"I won't, mother," he reassured her, injecting a faint sense of humour into his voice. Because her words had sounded comic then. They had sounded funny … Sounded ludicrous.

Don't get your head bashed in and your guts spilt all over the floor!

How ridiculous.

x.o.x

Blonde hair fell around a pale face, strands blowing in an ethereal way in the breeze. The cold was seeping up through the ground to meet her white dress, soaking into the fabric and spreading through her flesh like the plague. She was cold, arms wrapped tightly around her shaking form and large blue eyes down-cast, empty, filled with the ghosts of tears.

She cried a lot.

Tears for Yuna, tears for Shuyin, tears for every one of the people she created and moulded with love and care. Most of the liquid that she shed from the eyeballs was mostly for herself, though. Everything was her fault, after all, so it was reason enough she should drown herself in her sorrow.

Sat on the cold, hard ground underneath the glowing neon lights that flooded the empty street, rain spattering around her – the weather must have known she was coming and the atmosphere morphed into sinister shadows. She even manipulated the weather.

Everything she painted with ridden with sadness and pain; when her fingertips ghosted any pure, perfected surface it would mould beneath her gentle touch. She took a clear sheet of paper, unblemished, and struck powerful red and green and black lines over it and made her a friend. A friend she deeply wished she actually had.

Not some silly figment of her imagination.

He seeped like poison into her veins, circulating around her body until her past memories were warped around that one person. Axel was destroying her life, or the fragments that were left of it.

Or maybe she was doing that all for herself.

With a strangled sort of sob, she let her head fall back against the wall, cracking dully. She welcomed the darkness and the cold with open arms – that was where she belonged.

o.x.o

"Naminé! Naminé!" voices, swirling around her in a complex patchwork of patterns, as memories flashed through her hazy mind. She groaned, nausea rolling over her in waves and bile pushing up to the back of her throat. Shoulders were shaken lightly, fingers clasping them in a firm yet gentle and definitely warm and welcome.

Warmth …

It was a change from the cold her body had been subjected to, as she drifted in and out of consciousness through splinters of memory, trying to pick apart the truth and the lies that made up the complex spider web that was her life.

The hands moved down from their position on her shoulders. Her own ones - death like and pale - were taken and squeezed comfortingly. She liked this sensation against the beating of the raindrops that danced all around her, attempting to drive her back to the ground, into her coffin. However, the person holding her wouldn't let her slip out of consciousness, wouldn't loose her again, as she pulled against the chest of somebody and arms wrapped around her.

"You're as cold as death, you stupid girl…" the voice berated, not in an angry way but a gentle one, treating her like a china doll. Hard words loaded with poison stings would only shatter her fragile skin and she'd break up.

She registered that voice.

"Mnn… Axel?" she tried.

There was a long pause, silence hanging around them. Naminé wished the boy – it was obviously a boy by the tone of voice and flat chest her head was laying on – would say something. The silence could be cut roughly by a cheese knife. Not that either of them had a cheese knife at hand – she didn't think so, anyway.

"I'm not 'Axel', silly. I'm Roxas," the boy finally spoke, only he wasn't some nameless, faceless 'boy' anymore. He'd given her a name to call him.

Her mind raked through her memories, and although it was firmly fixed on an Axel she didn't know a Roxas, and she wondered if she should be happy or glad it wasn't the red-head. She wondered why she was even sat on the cold floor, anyway, and wouldn't her mother be worried…?

Mother. Yuna. Flash.

"You bitch! You expect me to swallow the lies you've been drip-feeding me like poison? I saw you that fucking slut, Yuna – you, my own wife! What about our wedding vows? Didn't they mean anything to you? Or is some prostitute with a huge chest more important?"

He was angry. Naminé didn't like it when her daddy got angry. She tip-toed around him cautiously, as if on the ridge of some volcano ready to explode. And boy, had he exploded this time.

Her friends told her it was only normal for parents to have arguments over who had to clean the dishes or make the salad, and then forget their trouble with a ball game. And that was what all the previous arguments had been, really – niggling little things.

But she had enough sense to tell her daddy was far madder about this than he had ever been about who cleaned the carpet.

"Not in front of Naminé! Not in front of my little girl!" Yuna sobbed. She looked odd back then – she didn't have any cuts of bruises and she wasn't covered with blood. She was pretty, she looked like a model with her full lips and large eyes and brunette hair.

"I think our little girl has every right to hear about what you've been doing behind our backs! You don't 'care' about Naminé! If you did you wouldn't swan off with Tifa… You'd think of your family! Look at us! Look at your fucking family! Make a choice, Yuna – who's more important to you?" He gestured towards the family portrait hung on the wall in all its splendour. It was a nice painting, and Naminé often paused to examine it with a sad little smile on her little-kid face – they all looked so happy. Back then. In another time and another place they were happy, and Yuna could deal with Shuyin's temper tantrums and he was her king and never hit her, not once, and Yuna was a queen and Naminé was their little blonde princess.

"I love you!"

"Love us enough to abandon us for some common tart!"

"That's not … I … I … I love you both! I can't help it, Shuyin…" Tears were rolling down her cheeks, her normal smile flipped upside down, and Naminé cowered, attempting to hide herself behind one of the net curtains in the living room. It didn't block her vision, though.

Shuyin, like an enraged bull, broke his promise. He hit her mummy.

And that, for the little girl, was like the beginning of the end, the start of a downward spiral. Nothing got better after that, and her daddy was erased from her mind forever as a kind and caring man. She would never call him by that title again, because a daddy didn't hit a mummy. He wasn't he daddy.

He was just Shuyin. A nightmare.

"Naminé?!" Roxas cried in alarm as the girl muttered something incomprehensible that sounded like: 'No! Don't hit her again!'. He looked down sadly at the writhing girl, years knocked off her age until she wasn't even in double digits anymore.

He just wanted to take some of her pain away.

"Don't worry, Nam, I'm here, I'm your best friend, I'm Roxas … Roxas, remember?"

"Roxas … That's a familiar sound…" muttered the girl, as the dead-weight of her head crushed his chest.

At least she looked peaceful now.

x.o.x

Her friends cried when she had to leave. She cried when she had to leave, too. So really, nobody was happy. Downward spiral, dragging her under. It was affecting everybody. They asked her why she was going, over and over again until her head hurt from all the questions.

She didn't know why herself, only that the fight between Shuyin and her mummy had a vital role to play in it. In its most simplistic forms, he hit her and that changed everything, even her house and school and friends and life and personality. In it's most complex form, after the fight they had sat down on the sofa and discussed it as adults and decided it was best if they left all the bad memories behind, put the past behind them and moved on. Adult minds worked in strange ways – they couldn't understand that nothing would be the same again. They could try to bury the past events and shelter Naminé, but she knew that she'd never forget. Even if the memory left, she'd still never call Shuyin her father. Not now. Not ever.

She asked her why she had to leave for what had to be the thousandth time, and she looked down at her little white shoes and her little feet that pointed inwards like a child's doll and shook her head. She didn't know, didn't want to say.

"Don't you like us anymore?" asked the red-head, pouting. She was an … unreasonable girl, unquestionably the boss. She wasn't the wisest, or strongest, and, according to the silver-haired one, she was 'only a girl'. But she had appointed herself to the role and it wouldn't change. And she thought, using her six-year-old logic, that she was the boss and if she said Naminé couldn't go she couldn't and that was the end of it.

"Of course I still like you…"

"If you leave, you'll break your promise," she said in a stony way, folding her arms. "Remember when we all swore we'd be together for ever and ever and ever? If you leave we can't do that."

Everybody promises things they don't mean. At the wedding Shuyin and mummy promised each other they'd always love each other. Was love what they had shown to Naminé last night? Did love make you hit people, and lie, and up-root everybody's lives and tear little girls away from their home and their best friends?

That wasn't love. Naminé wasn't very old but she had a strong perception of what 'love' was, and it wasn't that.

"I'm sorry… I'm sorry…" Naminé said softly, and she saw the cold look on her friend's face and salty tears rolled down her cheeks and she hung her head and cried liked a lily in a flood. And then she cried, and that started a chain reaction and soon he was crying, and he was, and he was, then she was too. Six lonely children, all crying together as they all hugged their friend they'd probably never see again all because of a broken promise. A stupid mistake made by some very stupid adults.

And Kairi held her friend tightly and said she was sorry for being so horrible – she wasn't mad at Naminé. She was sad at Naminé. Sad for Naminé.

It didn't matter. In this downwards spiral, everybody was sad around her and sad at her. Kairi was just another name to add onto the list.

o.x.o

"What did you do to her?!" yelled the red-head in an accusatory way, pulling fretfully at his red hair in the same way Naminé's sleeping fits caused her to thrash around. He had every right to be worried, as he clutched the blonde's good luck charm and hoped to God it was lucky enough to bring her back from the nightmare she seemed trapped in. She meant everything to him, even though he'd only known her for a little while it felt like he'd known her all her life. An old friend. And when he finally found her, she delirious, rolling around and screaming in a most horrible way in her sleep in the lap of some other boy.

"I didn't do anything to her!" said Roxas in a defensive voice, moving to shield the girl from the lunatic he obviously thought Axel was. The red hair and tattoos wasn't really helping his image as a 'sane' person. He wouldn't, however, have much of that glorious crimson left at the agitated way he pulled at it.

"Then why the fuck's she rolling around like that in the cold?"

"What, are you saying it's my fault?!" Roxas shouted, blue eyes blazing with fury, and Axel laughed scornfully. How cute – the little kid was trying to act tough. He was a little like Naminé on that score – he was the stereotypical blond with blue eyes (yet he didn't have boobs, and the stereotypical blonde tended to be female, but he'd let that slide) and he couldn't look angry even he'd wanted.

"It sure looks that way, doesn't it?" Came Axel's curt reply, trying to fight down the anger welling up in his chest as blondie played dumb, feigning innocence. "What have you been feeding her? Crack?"

"You really think I'd feed Naminé drugs? Do I look like a junkie marijuana addict to you?"

"Well, I dunno, the blond hair and stupid expression could be a cover-up. You'd be the perfect person, actually, because nobody would suspect somebody like you would feed little girls illegal substances and then try to molest them…"

Roxas' mouth dropped open. The look on his face was priceless, but Axel didn't have time to think about that. He had to think about Naminé. He bent down over her.

"Who the fuck to do you think you are?!" Roxas demanded. "You could be the one feeding her crack and trying to molest her, from the look on your face. Stay away from her! You're not involved!" Naminé was like a little sister to him and he didn't want this junkie-looking, suspicious-looking person to be all over her with that fake look of concern slapped across his face.

Axel's green fluorescent eyes burned, and Roxas flinched slightly. "What the fuck do you know?! I'm her boyfriend, of course I'm involved!"

He flinched again, under the pain his words were causing him. Boy … Friend? His little sister – virtually – had a boyfriend? "Why did she run away from you?"

"I don't know… Why the fuck do you care?!"

"She ran away from me, too. I'm … I'm here best friend… Or I was. I don't know what I've done wrong…" Tears clouded Roxas' vision, and he looked away from this stranger who claimed to be Naminé's Romeo, her one-and-only, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. He wouldn't give him the satisfaction of knowing he'd struck a nerve. But so many nerves had been struck that night, in the past few minutes, that it wouldn't have made a difference. The atmosphere hung around them, cold and sharp and pointy like an icicle that refused to melt, even under all the heat the hatred drilled into the clear surface.

"… She runs away a lot…" said Axel slowly; choosing his words carefully, both of them eyeing the other, distrust flitting between them like butterflies. And Roxas nodded slowly in recognition, as he felt her cheek, tracing the lines gently with his fingertips. She was burning up.

"I wonder what she's running from…"

"… I think that wherever she's running, she'd like to have this," said Axel, revealing her charm to Roxas' large eyes.

x.o.x

Naminé sat on one of the large rocks that decorated the rising falls. It was of her 'gang's' little places where they hung out regularly, but this time there was no gang, just Naminé, and this would be the last time she ever sat there and felt like she belonged. She was small compared to all the water rising up to kiss heaven around her – but she had a part in the world around her and fit into her own little nook.

She was getting pulled out roughly of her piece of heaven and cast into hell. She didn't want to leave. She didn't want to be forced to run away.

"Mind if I sit down here?"

"No, not at all," she smiled sadly, as she budged up to make room for the almighty butt of her friend, Axel. She heard a dull thump over the rushing water as his denim pants met the rock surface.

There was a long pause, silence rushing between them like the cascading water, as the same melancholy smile still played about her young features. "Penny for your thoughts?" Axel's good-natured words injected through the sounds of liquid rising in a phenomenon that probably was based in some boring science-like fact, like climate or something. But they were little and didn't care about why things were, but just how they were. They didn't need to know about electricity, all they needed to know what that colourful pictures lit up in the TV when a button was pressed, and just marvel at how, because why seemed so unimportant. How the pictures moved in the black box, not why they did that graceful dance.

"I'm thinkin' that I'm going to miss you…"

"What a coincidence – me too," grinned Axel, although the look of mirth was not mirrored in his large, expressive eyes. "I'm going to really, really miss you."

"But we'll never forget each other – right?"

"That sounds like a promise."

"It'll be our promise, then," said Naminé in as stern a voice as she could manage, watching that waterfalls sparkle around her, light floating around her milky white dress and hair as she pulled out her lucky charm from her pocket, a cold, metallic papou fruit. She had heard about the properties of the fruit from Kairi in a little-girly conversation, and it seemed strange that love and destiny should be embodied in the yellow plush skin of a fruit. Even stranger that they tried to capture that in a cold object lacking all the worth and pink sugar-spun love cotton candy had. "We'll both hold this and make and promise and that means we can't ever ever break it, and when I get older I'll come back and see you guys and we can all be together again."

"You sure?"

"We'll make it sure," she said confidently, needing something special to hold onto, some reminder of her friends she was going to leave behind. A reason for her to come back – this was a promise she promised herself she wouldn't break.

But she should have known better, as the two children held onto the object and wished for something…

That some promises you just couldn't keep.

As the years passed by, Naminé grew up from that little girl. She moved to Destiny Islands and met him, and he was replacement enough for all her old friends. They still lingered in her mind, but she drew them onto paper, getting them out of her head. They aged as she did, becoming no more than imaginary friends, as she reached out for somebody other than Roxas she found Axel and Kairi and Sora and Riku and Yuffie. She drew them all, and their parents, and her school friends, all aged to suit how she wanted them to be.

Yet she still broke her promise – she never realised who they were. She had no idea how important they were. She had no idea about that promise because she grew out of it, like how Shuyin said he'd always love Yuna and Yuna said she'd be faithful. She had no idea.

Until …

o.x.o

Now.

Present day flashed before her eyes as they snapped open to be greeted by two faces, staring down at her worriedly, spread across both their laps like a baby.

She couldn't stop the tears, as all the memories tore apart her mind, smashing against it like a sharp rock, making her bleed liquid from her eyeballs. And this time she wasn't as selfish to only cry for herself. She was crying for everybody else she'd allowed herself to forget. Her selfishness was still linked into this, though, because who forget them? She did… And even when they came back into her life so unexpectedly, she had no idea.

She wasn't insane – her drawings hadn't come alive. Her promise had – it brought them back. But she didn't remember, and she had a horrible feeling everything would come crashing down around her.

Promises only brought pain. Why should this one be any different?

x.o.x

"Axel… Why are you here?" she asked softly through her tears, as she sat, shared, in between Roxas and Axel. Both her friends, both very solid and real and important, and she'd run away from them both. Ran away from her promises. They both had their arms around her and both their coats to keep out the cold, although they were shivering. She didn't deserve it.

"I came to give you back your lucky charm. You dropped it."

"You made me remember my promise … Years ago…" She sniffled. She wondered if Axel remembered. "But … Why are you here now? Why are you on this island?"

He looked a little surprised at her out-of-the-blue question, but chose to answer it, figuring she must be delirious or something. Her face was a little red, and she did have a temperature – he grazed the back of his right hand swiftly across her forehead to check.

"Well … My old home … Hollow Bastion … Was hit by a hurricane … From the rising falls, these big ass waterfalls that go up, all this wind was getting driven from them and spun around. Crashed into the houses, wiped out the city, killed a few people… Most of us escaped, and got sent here… But I thought everybody knew that, it was all over the news."

"I don't watch the news," said Roxas and Naminé simultaneously, and they cast a knowing smile in the other's direction, like looking in the mirror at a reflection. "It's too depressing…" Naminé finished, playing with her blonde hair. "I had no idea. I went sort of crazy…"

"We all know you're crazy, Nam," said Roxas good-naturedly, and the three of them, brought together, laughed softly. As if was something they were meant to do – the three of them were aligned under the same stars or something corny like that and their paths were always meant to intertwine. Roxas and Axel were linked through the lucky charm, through Naminé.

She'd promised Roxas she'd never forget him, too, on the same metal papou fruit.

And they sat and chatted, on the floor in the dark and cold, pools of bright pink and green neon lights washing over them in an unreal way, as Naminé drew Axel and Roxas together, giggling and asking questions and offering quick kisses on the cheek to both of her friends – brought together by one promise.

One promise … She'd forgotten, in her sudden rush of warmth and love that no promise ends well. She'd forgotten about Shuyin. But he hadn't forgotten about her.

o.x.o

He was getting more and more pissed off as he staggered around, looking around for his princess in a drunk haze. He had killed Yuna … It was ringing through his head, and he didn't quite believe it to be true, but it was. He had killed Yuna … He had to get out, before Tifa found out and called the police. Had to run away. Had to get away.

He staggered around, just wanting to rewind and maybe … stop hitting her so hard. But it was too late for regret – it hadn't invaded his cold heart for years, and it suddenly came flowing back like warm hot chocolate pouring through his veins instead of ice. He felt sorry for Yuna. He replayed it again and again, he fragile body falling to the ground, and he had laughed at her, breath scented of beer. Tifa cared about her – maybe she would have been better off if, all those years ago, she had taken Naminé with her to live with Tifa and Axel. Of course she would've been better off – she wouldn't have died.

It was all his fault.

He remembered the wedding, when she was sat in her dress made of frothy white lace and that huge smile and the bouquet and the veil and she had been truly happy. Then the arguments began, small and niggly at first, but they soon expanded. Was that when she ran to find help, ran to Tifa, and made up all those lies? To get away from him …

Well, if he was going to hell for this, he might as well drag Naminé down with him, she was his daughter, and it was like daughter, like father. She would take after her dad – he wanted to have meant something. Naminé was the only person left who meant something in his life. Yuna was too dead to think about Shuyin – she was a good girl. She was probably in heaven with those who cared about her.

Naminé would join him in hell. He was all she had left, she was all he had left. And that was logic. Pure and simple fact.

He didn't know she was just fine without him, and had been for several years, ever since she was six years old. He staggered through the streets, the neon bright lights burning his eyes, as his vision adjusted, resting on three children. Teenagers. Talking and laughing. And to his surprise, his Naminé was one of them.

She was accepted … She had been unhappy for so long, only he was too drunk to realise, eyes sewn shut with hatred. He opened them now, and didn't like what he saw. His Naminé, acting like a slut stringing two boys along, kissing them both and giggling in that short little dress. She made herself fit in by being a slut. Well, she was talking with Tifa's son.

"Naminé!" he screamed, eyes blood-shot, and the threesome all turned their head. Naminé's eyes widened in alarm, as she tried to hide behind Axel and Roxas, who rose like shields. Trying to defend their princess.

They couldn't. Shuyin tore through their defences and yanked Naminé to her feet so hard she swore her arm would come flying form its socket.

"Leave her alone!" shouted Axel, trying in vain to rescue Naminé, as she was roughly dragged away.

"Where are you taking me?!" shouted the girl, her life falling down around her as she struggled, but he was to strong. "Where are we going?!"

"We're leaving…" Shuyin answered curtly, eyes narrowed. "We can't come back. Ever."

"What about mother?"

"Yuna's not coming with us."

"What?!"

"Naminé, be a good girl. We're going," he shouted, spittle landing on her face, as he raised her fists. She shrunk back, and Axel and Roxas both tried to run after her to get her back.

Promises were never meant to be kept.

No matter how hard they ran Naminé knew they would never be able to reach her.

She broke her promises – she ran away from Roxas, she ran away from Axel. Now, when things were looking up, she was forced to run away from both of them.

That was all Naminé could do. Run away. Run further away, deeper into hell, as Shuyin forced her into the back of a cab.

Once she started running, she couldn't stop, even if she wanted to.

Amongst all the jostling, her lucky charm tumbled back out of her pocket, and Axel was left holding it, broken-hearted, eyes wide. Memories were slowly starting to affect him too, or maybe he knew all along and was waiting for her to remember.

When she did, it was too late.

x.o.x

"You broke your promise, Naminé."

x.o.x

"Everybody promises things they don't mean."

o.x.o

"Espeically you… Naminé."

-The End-

Ooh. Is sad. And rushed. I like the flash backs. And hopefully all is revealed. My friend Lamatikah forced me to write this cause I was all 'CAN'T BE BOTHERED'. Lol. Poor Axel. Poor Roxas. Poor Naminé. I guess when she remembered her promise it was too late because she'd already broken it. This chapter is 13 pages long … Wonder if there's any significance to this xD. And Nami Axel Roxas friendship is cool – I love it . Review, please!