Heartbeat
The girl in the mirror was always Kairi. That awkwardly skinny blonde girl didn't show herself around Naminé anymore. She rather enjoyed the change in scenery. Naminé was smiling now, even, in private. The artist would giggle at the redhead, swaying her hips back and forth and curling her hair around her finger as the dust in the sunlight from the open windows would flutter about between them. It was very fairytale-like.
But the nights... those nightmares of a beastly Ryo were back again, and more vivid than the sun's reflection on glass. The dreams were like glass. Everything was so pointy and her skin was so easily punctured and flayed. Words were shrill frequencies that scratched at her eardrums like cat's claws. And that heartbeat, her heartbeat. It made her so anxious, like the sound of it made her adrenalin pump, like she was encouraging the tempo to speed. The dreams were so claustrophobic. Like Ryo's apartment. Like Naminé's head. Like Marluxia's stare.
Naminé could barely think around the park anymore. The shwing of Marluxia's scythe on the weeds always broke her bubble. Eventually, she didn't even bother opening her sketchbook; her concentration was too scattered anymore, and every time she went to draw her thoughts, she drew Kairi in pieces with a black silhouette of Ryo eating her limbs. Her own drawings frightened her to the point of tears. She hated the hands that made those awful things. She cut them to bits with the paper like an owner rubbing a dog's nose in its mess. Her hands would learn to never do those things again. They must be punished.
And where was Ryo in all this? His body was contorted in the back alley—not dead, but lethargic, nonetheless. The boy barely remembered how he'd come to be there in the first place. He really didn't care to know, anyways.
By the time Naminé had found him, it was pouring rain. He looked up at her, she looked down at him, bags under their eyes. They were both so terribly alone and frightened.
Naminé fell to her knees, wrapping her arms around his body tight as too-small belts. She was drowning in his wet hair, but she would rather die than be alone. She would rather die.
Author's Note: Yay, a longer chapter for this fic! I'm pretty happy with this one and I think it's my favorite of the ones I've written so far and I'm excited to write the next chapter. I'm finally really getting into main plot of the story, the really big part, the whole reason I wanted to write this piece. Oh, and this fic won't be longer than 10 chapters, if it even reaches that many, if anyone was wondering.
Thanks for reading!
~Lully