one like lightning, one like nails
So Axel gets his blue-lightning wake-up call, and for a moment he draws an absolute blank because nobody has those eyes.
"Christ, kid, no need to kill me," he says as if he always wakes up to someone glaring at him. But the eyes don't change, just move a little to keep contact with his own.
"Aren't you the one who kills people?"
He laughs, not only at the misconception that keeps following them around but at the bitter-sullen voice that comes out of the blonde blue-eyed kid. "Hell no. The only person close to an assassin is Larxene, and only when she's not strung out or drunk. How'd you get in here anyway?"
"Ansem put us here and told us to shut up."
"Us?"
The kid bristles when he looks around, finally realizing that there are three people in the room and not two.
And there she is--blonde and blue-eyed like him, but with paler hair and eyes with more blue than lightning. She's wearing white--every inch of her clothes is blank-canvas white, from her spaghetti-strap dress to her summer sandals. He wonders how he could miss her--she's like a signal flare in his mostly-dull room.
"And what's your name?" he asks no one in particular.
"Naminé."
Naminé. Naminay, he thinks phonetically. A name in. Name in a.
In name, a ------.
Blank. There's a gaping hole in her name, and that's why he couldn't see her before.
"So how'd Ansem find you?" The question is for Naminé, but the kid answers instead.
"He didn't. He just drove up and dragged Naminé in, so I went with her."
"There must be some reason besides your looks that kept him from shooting you for that. Ansem never takes two people at a time."
"Naminé yelled for me, so he took me too. And I'm Roxas."
"Worst mistake of your life. Roxas," he adds. "Once you're in Oblivion, you never get out."
"I know. I heard the stories. But I'm staying with Naminé."
By then Axel figures that they're not a couple; they could be cousins, friends--hell, they could be twins for all he knows. If they were a couple, there would be more fear, anxiety, more what's-going-to-happen-to-us, but instead there is just Roxas' sullen protectiveness and Naminé's blank fragility.
But even with no lightning, her eyes are almost like Roxas'--ten-fathom eyes that pin him to the spot like nails. So he looks between them as silence falls--one eye shoots him like burning-pure-blue lightning, the other drives nails through him and makes him feel like he's bleeding.
And he thinks, No wonder Ansem picked them.