Hey y'all, I'm sorry, but the next chapters are going to have bigger spaces in between them, as I've been dumped, started sports, school, and have overall been feeling pretty melancholy recently. But don't you worry; I'll keep trying to get these chapters out fairly regularly. (think every 5 weeks) I hope you all enjoy the next chapter!
'But it was not your fault but mine,
And it was your heart on the line,
I really fucked it up this time,
Didn't I my dear?'
~Mumford & Sons, Little Lion Man
Naminé
Her night had been well spent, in her humble opinion. The three had spent much longer than needed at the store, searching for something to cook up back at Roxas' apartment, and finally when they had decided on tacos, they'd spent an additional thirty minutes attempting to cook the ground meat just right, and had ended up burning it in the end. Sora had called in the meantime. Apparently Kairi hadn't been the most pleasant person to Sora, and Naminé had hoped that she would now get a few more days with Roxas. That was, if Roxas' friend Axel would just leave them alone for a while. It wasn't just the fact that the red head was there, either. He seemed nice enough, and she did find him genuinely funny. But he also seemed to be growing more and more angry as the night went on, and it made Naminé feel vaguely uncomfortable.
After their failed dinner attempt, they'd spent some time establishing where Naminé would sleep, and, after a while, she had settled into the guest bedroom, snuggled in a fleece blanket, and attempted to get some sleep. It had taken a good amount of time to get tired, and just when she felt herself start to drift off, she heard the muffled voices of Roxas and Axel from the living room. When they first started, she simply rolled away from the direction of the bedroom door and shut her eyes. But after minutes passed and the voices only rose in volume, she slowly rolled off of the bed, and cracked the bedroom door open. The hallway leading out of the room led all the way down to Roxas' room, and hallway in between the two rooms was another threshold which led to the living room. She crawled, extending each arm and leg carefully, stopping just before the brink of the living room. She sat down, her knees to her chest.
"-Doesn't even know about you. Look, I know that you've only been with her for a day, but you're an idiot if you keep this up, you hear?" Naminé furrowed her brow, that voice was Roxas' friend, Axel. What was he talking about? She heard the muffled giggle of someone else-Roxas. "Come on, man, go easy on me. I don't need to tell her shit. You know that phrase, 'ignorance is bliss'? Well I think that's the best way to deal with it. Besides, I didn't do anything in front of her today, see? I can control myself!" What was Roxas talking about? What was he hiding from her? "Roxas. You managed not to get shitfaced in front of her once. During the goddamn day. Have you looked at yourself in the last hour? What would you do if she couldn't sleep and came out here to get a glass of water or something?" "Look, Axel, I don't wanna think about that right now. Everything is working out right now, why should I start worrying about stupid stuff right now?"
"Because, someday you're gonna have to worry about it, Roxas! And someday you two are gonna have to deal with the fact that you can't go three days without getting hammered out of your god damned mind!" Axel exclaimed, followed by a moment of stark silence. Naminé held her breath. Roxas drank? She remembered the few times that she and her friends had actually gone to parties in high school. She knew Roxas had been drunk a few times when they were still in secondary school, certainly drunk more times that any of their friends, with the exception of only Riku. She knew he'd liked to drink…but was it really so bad?
"Oh Axel, relax! I'll get everything under control before then. Besides, I don't even know what's gonna happen between the two of us. Maybe she'll end up hating me and I'll be stuck with you for the rest of my life…" she heard Roxas' voice lift. She heard Axel sigh, and the couch springs shift, "Come here." Axel muttered. Without a second thought she scampered back to her room as quietly as possible, shut the door behind her, and settled back down into her bed. It wasn't ten seconds after she'd thrown the blanket over herself and shut her eyes did she hear the door open, and Axel whisper, "Naminé?" She didn't answer. Had he heard her in the hallway? Were they mad at her? But it was apparently a good thing that she did not respond, because she heard Axel say, "You see, Roxas? Look at her. If you really care about her so much, you'll stop…look I love drinking a few beers as much as you do, but you have something to pull your life together for now."
Naminé heard the sound of retreating footsteps, but did not hear the door shut. She was so tempted to turn and glance up at the doorway, but just as she was about to open her eyes, she heard another set of footsteps slowly sauntering towards the bed. Had Axel stayed in the room? Was he about to hurt her? She tensed herself, coiling her fingers to strike out. But before she had the chance to lash out at him, she heard a shuffle, and then a soft thump. "Shit!" she heard someone hiss, and to her surprise, it was not Axel, but Roxas that she heard. After he finished muttering to himself, she felt the opposite side of the bed dip, and then she found herself aware of a body next to her. She waited for him to say something, or to move, but he did not, and eventually she let her muscles relax, and she allowed herself to drift away into a deep and still sleep.
Riku
Riku awoke in the morning to his phone's alarm chirping at him, reminding him that he had a duty to his friends. He roused himself and stretched out. He had to find Aqua today. Or at least try. His back popped and he slowly got to his feet, fiddling with his phone as he did so. Twilight Town was no Radiant Gardens in terms of size; however, the silver haired man still knew that it was going to be a steep task to find Aqua. He showered and dressed himself as quickly as he could, and was out of the hotel not thirty minutes later. After a quick run through a local coffee shop and a somewhat flirtatious conversation with a brunette named Olette, he found himself in his rental car without a clue as to where to start his search. Should he get to the airport and try to ask about Aqua from there? Or what about a store? He thought about his plight for a minute more. He wasn't finding Aqua by just standing here. He switched the car into reverse and headed for the nearest supermarket.
Twilight Town hosted a Super Target, a Walgreen's, and small Walmart. Riku roamed the three stores for as long as he could before he started to get strange looks from people who had witnessed him aimless wandering around the stores, and finally left. Riku thought long and hard, where would Aqua be? She was staying with a friend…to think, what were their names? Torra? Vanitas? No, those weren't right. He sighed in frustration. It was foolish of him to think that he could find a woman that he'd met once before in a town that he didn't know. The rest of his day was spent wandering through every shop in the town plaza, every park, anything that he could see Aqua shopping at or just being around. But asides from an amusingly homey ice cream shop that sold the most peculiar flavors of ice cream, he found nothing interesting.
Couldn't he think of anywhere that she might be? Had she said anything as to where she was going besides to visit her friends? He couldn't conjure up anything more specific than that, and so he drove aimlessly around the dusk-lit town until he found a brick building hosting a neon sign that beckoned to him with the promises of alcohol. Riku spent the next few hours debating whether he should completely loose his inhibitions or if he should remain responsible. In the end, however, he ended up barely catching a buzz, and he ended up striking up a conversation with the bartender. A nice man, about twenty four, brown hair, lean muscle packed onto tanned arms, quite the conversationalist, who went by the name of Leon.
"How you holding up, big guy?" Leon had asked from behind the bar. Riku had shrugged and swirled the brown liquid in his glass. "Can't say, yet." Riku muttered. The bartender handed a martini to a rather loud woman a few stools down from Riku before returning to the silver-haired man. "If there's anything you need, I'm here." Leon said, and for some absurd reason, Riku believed him. There was a glint in the man's brown eyes that reminded Riku why he's always found small towns so uncomfortably close, despite that fact that Twilight Town was technically not even a town. "Thanks, man." Riku sighed before taking another sip of his drink, "listen, I'm looking for someone. I don't know if you've ever seen her, its fine if you haven't, I just really need to find her." Leon set his elbows on the bar, and fixed Riku with a stare of concern, "Sure, of course. I'll help in any way I can." Riku smiled briefly, before saying, "Her name's Aqua. She's tall, has this crazy, bright blue hair. She'd have been with two men."
The brunette seemed to think about this for a moment before frowning, "I'm really sorry, man. I haven't." he grinned a bit and continued, "I'm sure if a woman came in with bright blue hair I'd remember her." Riku felt his shoulders sag, but he offered Leon a thank you and downed the rest of his drink. "I'll keep a look out for her…you trying to confess your love or something?" He asked in a teasing manner. Riku brought his face into a monotonous mask, "No. I need Aqua to find someone for me…that's who I have to confess my love to." Leon smiled and replied, "I'm really happy for you. I hope you find her, then." Riku nodded, "So do I." Pence pushed his elbows off of the counter and asked, "Do you want me to refill that?" Riku gazed down at the emptied glass, and debated whether he should or not in his head, before shrugging and saying, "Only halfway." Leon nodded and went to refill Riku's glass.
What was he going to do? What if Aqua went back to Radiant Gardens before he could find her here? When Leon came back from refilling Riku's glass, the silver haired man stood suddenly, causing his vision to momentarily spin and twirl. When he'd finally regained his bearings, he asked the bartender, "Can I give you my number?" Leon quirked an eyebrow at Riku and stammered, "I thought you were going to confess your love to someone else?" Riku rolled his eyes, and snapped, "I am, let me give you my number so then if you do see her you can call me and let me know!" Leon set down Riku's drink, and replied, "I barely know you." Riku fought the urge to groan out loud. Now he'd decided to show the suspicions of a city-dweller? However, Leon continued, "But I think this is awesome, here you go!" he brunette exclaimed while jotting down a number on a nearby napkin.
Riku felt like he could cry. Leon handed him the napkin and he beamed at the bartender, "Thank you so much!" Leon smiled back at him and nodded, "You're welcome." Riku left not five minutes later, Leon shouting behind him, "I hope everything works out for you!" He was going to find her. He was going to get his friend back.
Kairi
"Kairi, you have visitors again today." The nurse said quietly. Kairi glanced away from the tiny, bolted-shut window to her right and glanced at the nurse standing in the doorway. "Who is it?" she heard herself ask. It both amused her and frightened her that she seemed to witness all of her actions as if she were watching someone else do them. She felt utterly powerless in her own body, detached from the strings that were supposed to be holding her up. The nurse said gently, "It's your mother." Kairi felt her mouth press into a solid, thin line. She solemnly shook her head, and the nurse sighed before leaving the room. She'd been able to fight off the visitors thus far, with the exception of one, of course. She rested her head back on the starched, white pillow under her neck, and stared blankly up at the off-white tiled ceiling.
It had confounded her as to why he'd had to have shown up then, of all times. It was as if he had waited until she'd become intolerably miserable before trying to reach out to her. She not only found it odd that he'd waited until then to find her, but she also wondered how he'd found her. She hadn't exactly proudly announced her profession to the world, and to keep others from knowing what she did, she often stayed quiet about her location to her friends, but she knew if a person really wanted to find her they could. Had he really wanted to see her so badly?
No. She decided bitterly. If he'd wanted to find her, he would have in the past five years. He'd had no reason not to visit with her or at least check up on her throughout college. But it was as if he'd cared about her so much in high school, and then the minute he got to college, he'd completely lost any concern for her that he'd had and moved on with his life without so much as a bat of the eye. And that hurt her more than she could ever put into words. They'd been through so much. How could he just forget about all of that so easily?
Sora and Kairi had been friends since before kindergarten. It had started with pointless playdates set up by their mothers, ecstatic that their children had made a friend. They hadn't really cared very much at first about the concept of 'friendship', and Kairi knew that at least for her, he was just a boy who always seemed to have snot dripping from his nose and an unethical obsession with toy swords. They didn't hate each other; they just didn't see why they should be friends. After all, everyone was their friend when they were four. Kairi lived under the assumption that everyone loved her, and at the time, it was true. Their playdates were spent with her trying to prop her Barbie dolls up in the furniture and pretend that they were helpless princesses, in dire need of protection, while he swung his plastic light sabers and pirate swords around, knocking her precious toys off of their perch on the sofa.
Their elementary school days were spent in a haze of coloring activities and recesses running away from the opposite sex, and somehow always ending up banding together when they needed a partner in class or a friend to hide out with on the playground from other kids. Their tolerance of one another slowly grew from a friendship of convenience to a genuine camaraderie. They grew around each other, molding to the other's wants and needs, tailoring themselves to the other without their noticing it. Soon, however, their holding of hands and closeness led to their middle school classmates teasing the two relentlessly that they were going to get married, and that they obviously had a crush on one another. Those allegations stunned Kairi.
She'd never thought of Sora like that! He'd always been the one to listen to her babble about all of those cute boys she felt that she could never have, he was hardly her prince charming. She and Sora has always scoffed, and written off the wild accusations that the middle school student body had thrown at them. However, due to a sea of hormones flooding their bodies and the constant berating of their friends, they gradually stopped holding hands, hugging in the hallways. They remained as close as ever, though. They went through each other's first relationships with people whose names she no longer remembered as if the other's relationship were their own. Kairi and Sora knew absolutely everything about one another, perhaps even some things that a boy and a girl should never know about one another unless they were in a serious relationship. She remembered after she went through her first serious breakup, how Sora had been there, a gallon of Blue Bunny ice cream in one hand, a DVD copy of The Notebook in the other.
On the first day of sophomore year, she remembered walking back into Destiny High School, and noticing the rather large accumulation of women hovering around Sora, and felt the first twang of protectiveness in her gut. The shocking part was, however, that she wasn't shocked at her feelings. She simple took them and accepted them. There was no fighting of wills, not thoughts protesting her feelings, nothing but acceptance. That was when she realized that she'd been in love with her best friend for a long, long time. It was her sophomore year when she slowly became more and more aware of how closely she paid attention to Sora's actions, how she always seemed to notice who he talked about and who he looked out. It amused her how jealous she found herself whenever she saw him with another girl, even if it was just Xion or Naminé.
Junior year was the year she noticed all of the eyes that followed her in the hallway. She'd never been one to deny the center of attention, and she had to admit, seeing how every boy's eyes would follow her body as she walked down the hallway caused her chest to swell with pride. And though she still knew in her heart that she loved Sora, she couldn't deny herself the affection that practically fell in her lap from other men. She had admittedly fantasized about Sora being her first, however, when the time came, she did not feel sad in the back of her then boyfriend's car. She felt the slight rush of pain, and then nothing but the rush she usually felt when she won a volleyball match or came in first in a track meet. She'd finally done 'it', and she felt the strangest rush of pride that she'd gotten it over with before college. She found it almost addictive that she could make a boy feel like that, that somebody wanted her so badly.
That was when she realized how wonderful sex was. She found it nearly impossible to stop once she'd started, and after she and her boyfriend broke up, she quickly found a new boy to date. Not because she wanted love, per say, but because she wanted that feeling back of being so powerful. No matter how much she loved it, though, she could never find it in her to tell Sora. She always heard a voice in the back of her head telling her that he wouldn't take it right, that he'd think less of her. She made it to nearly the end of her senior year without Sora having a clue. When he did find out, he took much better than she'd imagined, he'd even confessed to sleeping with a girl from a rival school he'd dated first semester. She'd felt so relieved. That was, until she'd laid down in her bed that night and felt tears spring from her eyes, and with an unexplainable jerk of her heart, realized that Sora did not love her. If he did, wouldn't he have been upset? There was no way he'd love her…
The last conversation they'd had was the day before he left for college. He'd shown up at her house unexpected, she'd still been wearing her pajamas and her hair up. The thing was, they didn't feel the need to say a lot to each other. They were content with sitting next to one another, in complete silence. They sat there for hours, long after dusk, hands together, fingers interlaced, the TV on in front of them though neither one of them was really watching. Kairi did not cry that day. She did not weep for him, because she felt so certain that they would see each other again.
It wasn't until two years had passed without word from him, did she finally realize that he wasn't coming for her. He'd left her without a glance backwards, and she resented him for it. For a while, she viewed every man she slept with as a way of revenge against him. Deep down, she knew she was accomplishing nothing, Sora didn't know or care that she was giving herself to every man who asked. But it made her feel better, to have a man in her arms for however short amount of time that she could. It wasn't until she'd been away from Sora for four years did she realize that she wanted him, and only him, and that she should have told him how much she loved him when she'd had the chance.
But Sora had finally come back. And she hated him. She hated that he'd seen her in such a vulnerable state, she hated that he'd ignored her for five years, but most of all, she hated that she was still unconditionally in love with him after all this time. What was she going to do? Would she ever see him again? The nurse returned, interrupting her thoughts, and said, "Kairi, you have a different visitor now." "Who is it?" her voice inquired. "The boy that was here yesterday…I told him that since he upset you so much yesterday that he probably wouldn't be able to see you, but he insisted that I asked you." Kairi stared blankly at the nurse. Her long brown hair, braided behind her shone underneath the fluorescent lights. Had this woman ever felt anything like Kairi had felt? Had she ever been heartbroken to the point where she couldn't get out of bed? Had she given herself to a man? Had she loved someone to the fullest? The nurse sighed after a minute of silence, "I'll tell him to go."
Kairi watched from afar as the nurse turned to leave. What was she doing? If she didn't speak up now, Sora would be gone for good. "Wait!" Kairi croaked. The nurse stopped and turned back to Kairi, eyebrows raised. Kairi took a deep breath, and said, "Send him in."
Wow, that was really fun to write! How was everyone's return to school? Mine's been alright so far. Anyway, I hope you all review for me, favorite, follow, etc. and have a fantastic day everyone!
Special thanks to: 89niners-best-team-ever, MasterKaze, SummonerDagger88, Zack1187, Highflyer123, Lucenthia, and Noble. Thanks for reviewing, guys!