A/N: I'm sorry this one took longer. But it's not my fault! The plot bunnies took me over the bridge and dropped me off in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, where I had to write a whole new story. The bunnies wouldn't leave me alone until I posted the first chapter of that story.
A huge thank you to nafara, Wounded Wing, VidiaPhoenix, mysteryreader6626, LunaEtSidera, and AllOtherNamesHaveBeenTaken for reviewing last chapter. You are all awesome-sauce.
::XV::
falling
"I found out about love on today's mission—that it's something powerful."
"That's true. It is. But I'll never get to experience it."
Roxas looked to Axel. "Why not?"
Axel was silent too long, staring off into the red sunset.
"…You need a heart, man," was his late reply. "You…need a heart."
Dexné hid herself in her room as long as she could, only venturing out for missions and sunsets.
Memories were unstable, flickering from dull wisps of light to blinding flashes, buzzing in soft drones to blaring like horrified screams. They wouldn't stop, though all reason said they should.
She had died, hadn't she? There should be no memory after death.
So then why…why were memories unfamiliar flickering before her mind's eye? Images of an older Lea, sounds of a voice deepened with age. The soft brush of fingertips, the warm embrace of lean muscled arms, the shelter found in the crook of his neck…
Where were those memories coming from? Were they dreams? Nothing but wistful fantasies of what she wished could have been…what was never allowed to be.
Dexné tried to focus on her missions, tried with all her corporeal might. But it was not enough. The spiritual, the ghost of the mind, overtook her like waves upon a small rowboat. It flipped her, threatened to drown her, and it was all she could do to keep her head above water.
Falling…
That's right. The water…feels like…falling.
The web of blood that poured onto cobblestone street, the darkness that danced at her vision, the muffled screams. She could not have survived.
Lea…did you watch me die?
Were you…sad?
Such were the thoughts that plagued her. Questions upon questions with not a shred of answer in sight.
I did not mean to go like that. Are you mad? Are you angry at the foolishness of my choice?
To take such a risk and not think of you, or anyone who might miss me…
It was a shock to think anyone could miss someone like her. She was no more than a pale wisp of a girl, a shadow that had no place among the brightly colored living.
And yet…voices from faraway said otherwise.
"If…if one of your friends went away, would you miss them?"
"What kind of question is that? Of course I would... – d – e – e, are you okay?"
In the present, Dexné recoiled, brow pinched, eyes squeezed so tight they hurt.
Are you okay? Are you…okay? – d – e – e?
What name—what name was that? And why…why did they ask her that question so many times? Dee. It sounded like Dee.
My name was…
Dexné looked around the dimly lit room she had called home for so long a time.
The stark white walls held no answer, nor would they ever.
Deep in the night Dexné laid awake, pondering, wondering. Handfuls of fitful sleep yielded only nightmares, or what she assumed was nightmares. She woke not remembering their content, just that she opened her eyes with physical heart running in frenzy and cold sweat clutched in her palms.
Always, in the back of her mind, there was a voice screaming for her to open her eyes.
The quiet of the night paved the road for thoughts, racing like horses on a track. Among them she weaved for her name. Something that ended in Dee, something that began with…
Despite her social dullness, Dexné was far from a stupid woman, or so she liked to think. Where she failed in one area, she excelled in another. And she liked to believe reasoning was one of her strong suits. She knew Axel's true name; she knew Saïx's. The names of the Nobodies were nothing more than the scattering of the true names with an X thrown in. It was not hard to reason hers was the same.
With the limited letters it did not take long to come to a conclusion.
Néde, sounding like Neh-dee came to the forefront.
The more and more she thought it, the more it sounded to be true. It was familiar, though distant. Like the echo of a far off memory.
"Néde," she took to saying out loud. "Néde. Néde. Neeh-deee."
A smile found its way to her lips, a spark made its way into her eye.
It made sense. It must be. Yes, she remembered, her homeroom was located down the hall from Lea's and Isa's, and those homerooms were alphabetized by first name. Students with names beginning in A-D were in Homeroom 1, E-H Homeroom 2, and so on. Lea and Isa were in Homeroom 3. Dexné, the letter of her true name being N, was much farther down the hall.
The excitement of finding her true name shot her out of bed, had her pacing back and forth with a happy energy, instead of the usual anxious one she'd grown so accustomed to. She could not lie down, let alone attempt sleep.
Néde. My name is Néde.
Restless legs nearly skipping and hopping carried her out to Shadow's Hall, down the dimly lit corridor, and to where she didn't know or care. All she cared was that she had a name, a name all her own. A name not of the Superior's making.
At that last thought, she slowed. Of course it wasn't that the Superior didn't give her a good name, or that she was ungrateful in anyway, but… Her name was her name; the sound spoken by her mother when she first came into the worlds. No other name could replace that. That was all there was to it.
Her meandering mind tarried on, brought her to the Grey Area without conscious effort. She went blindly ahead, following like a docile mare though she knew not who or what held her reins. But like a mare she went stiff and still at the first sign of danger.
Red.
He stood with his back to her, looking out of the glass wall that filled a whole side of the room. The pale golden light of "Kingdom Hearts" shifted softly through the transparent wall, illuminated him as if he were a heavenly ghost. Dexné could see the faint reflection of him, bare against the cold black of the forever night. It made him seem even more ghostly, as the black of his coat bled into the black of the sky. Red hair and pale skin and green shadowed eyes bore the only color.
Shadowed eyes, she thought. He looks so tired. Looking up at that moon…what is he thinking about?
His arms were folded before him, tightly, like he was trying hard to keep something inside.
Bare and quiet feet stepped light as air towards him, closer, closer, until fear pulled the reins. Only a few feet behind him. A few more steps and she could reach out and touch him, ask him what was wrong, perhaps offer him an elixir. What was keeping him up so late? Had he been to sleep at all? She wondered if he woke in a cold sweat as she had, heart racing, memories flitting.
Her hand reached out, wavered, and then returned to clasp the other, tucked under her chin as if in prayer. It was then she caught glimpse of her reflection in the glass, a pale figure next to his.
And her heart stopped.
White sleeping gown, bare ashen blonde head, black eyes wide and watery with fright.
She had forgotten her black cloak.
She stood shivering in the frozen state of fear, mind whirling like a blizzard's wind for want of relief, for a hiding spot.
The fire seemed to have sensed the encroaching frost and flared. He tore his eyes from the golden moon and narrowed in on himself, wondering what was amiss, before flicking to the side, to the girl in the glass who stood next to the man, though further behind.
Their eyes met. Emerald green and pitch black.
In the split second it took for his eyes to go impossibly wide, for all color to drain from his face, did Dexné dive to the side, behind him where her reflection would be hidden, and opened a black hole at her feet. The Dark Corridor fell her through nothingness, but did not take her far. With a breath it expelled her from around the corner, tossed her to her hands and knees where she scrambled desperately to her feet.
From around the corner she heard another fall, a bang of glass, a sliding screech, and a whispering gasp. Having been so close to the fire, the cold of fear could keep her frozen for only so long. Her shaking fingers found the edge and gave way to her panic whitened face. Peering from that corner she saw him, leaned against the glass, wide green eyes looking out over the empty Grey Area, disbelieving of what they saw.
The white room offered no testimony to what was seen, if it was ever there, or if it was a mere fabrication of his sleep-deprived mind.
Only one thing was certain: they both looked as if they'd seen ghosts.
Who was the true ghost, she could not answer.
Emerald sea eyes stared at her. She stared back. The sun shining behind his head gave him a scarlet gold halo, brought fire to life in his hair, and made her squint against its fierceness.
"You okay?" he asked.
Present time Dexné flinched at those words, huddled closer to the wall, her black cloak wrapped tightly around her. A dark refuge, safe from the sun.
How close she had brushed the fire. How close had she come to being devoured whole?
Her heart had not slowed. Dexné did not know how long she sat in the corner of her room, braced against two walls, with her cloak's hood pulled tightly over her face. It was long enough, she figured, for her physical heart to have slowed its racing. But it had not.
Only memories, she told herself. Only memories, not real feeling. And so she tried to think of other things. Of horses and meadows and forests, of towering cities and little towns. But those imaginings stretched thin, and what truly concerned her punched back to the forefront.
If you had turned around in time to catch me, what would you have said? What would you have told me? Called me? Néde? Would you have reminded me my name is Néde?
Warm arms, the soft brush of fingertips, the safe crook of his neck. Fantasies.
Because she had died, and he had seen a ghost.
As long as we keep each other in our thoughts, we'll never be apart.
Hey, do you know why the sun sets red?
Dexné shook her head hard enough to bash her brain against the walls of her skull, but even that did little to stop the assault of voices and pictures.
She walked through the house like a ghost, and surely that was what she was. Her white gown was ethereal in the darkness of night, her long hair limp and dead with no breeze to give it life.
The house she called home was empty. Empty. The cries of those who had loved and were loved had long faded. Only she and the empty shell remained, but deep and dark, with a hole so black and never ending.
She felt nothing. She felt everything.
Everything that was supposed to be there…but was not.
Nobody's home.
Dexné stood and strode from the memoires of the mind. Or so she tried. But she could not help but wonder. Did she linger? Did she get to say the goodbye her abrupt end had not allowed?
In a flash of clarity, she remembered. Yes, she remembered saying goodbye, and then…and then she remembered running. Running away. It was likely; so like her.
Even as a ghost she ran.
A sharp pain broke out between her eyes, and though she rubbed the spot it would not recede. She needed to get away. Away from remembrances, away from dreams that never came true. She went to her nightstand, opened the drawers there and sought out an elixir that she had previously mixed with sleeping potion. She opened the vial and drank in one sure gulp.
Dizziness was quick to follow the medication, was quick to put her in a stupor strong enough for her mind to lie quiet. And when her mind was quiet it opened the door for sleep.
She wished she hadn't gone to sleep after all.
This time she remembered the dream that besieged her. But calling it a dream was a lie, did not give it the dire implication it deserved. Her pounding heart woke her, and every time she fell back into sleep there the dream was again.
She stood in the center of a field; tall dry grass trembled in heavy breezes all around her. Dark clouds stained the sky black and grey, and blanketed the sun, washed the field in sleepy shade. But there was nothing relaxing or sleepy about it. She was upset in the dream, always upset, because her pictures, hundreds of them, were scattered everywhere. Clusters would be caught in the dead grass, more would be stuck on thorns that grew on blood red branches that arched and tangled together—like barbed wires growing from the earth.
There were too many photos. She didn't know how she was going to gather them all before the wind blew them away. The grass cut her, the thorns stabbed her, but she had to get the photos, she just had to.
They were her memories. Each photo was a memory.
There would come a point in the dream where she managed to pick one up, but before she could look at it, see what it contained, it would burst into flame. Then a black coated arm would come from behind, wrap around her head, and cover her eyes.
And then everything went up in flames.
She would try to pull the arm away, struggled viciously against it, but it was like trying to bend steel.
Dexné woke in a sweat but, thanks to the sleeping potion, fell straight back into that man's arms.
She knew it was a man; she could feel the body behind her and it was no woman's. The back of her head was pressed tightly into the crook of his neck.
He would not let go.
And she could not scream.
Smoke filled her nose, her mouth, gagged her until she was sure she would suffocate. The fire surrounded them. She heard its hiss, the crackles, and the roar of it as a whole. And then, when realization hit and she knew her pictures were burning, she panicked. A strangled cry, a choking gasp. She writhed against the man, but he would not give.
All her struggling awarded with only the shifting of her head, but it was enough, and she peeled open an eye. The black arm obscured most of that eye's sight, and all she saw was red. Red, burning, burning! Everything was burning.
𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕙𝕚𝕝𝕝𝕤 𝕒𝕣𝕖 𝕓𝕦𝕣𝕟𝕚𝕟𝕘
𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕞𝕠𝕦𝕟𝕥𝕒𝕚𝕟𝕤 𝕒𝕣𝕖 𝕓𝕦𝕣𝕟𝕚𝕟𝕘
𝕗𝕒𝕝𝕝𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕥𝕙𝕣𝕠𝕦𝕘𝕙 𝕒𝕤𝕙𝕖𝕤
The man held one picture in his free hand between his forefinger and middle, the only picture spared from the inferno blazing hot around them. But then it began to curl in on itself, its edges blackening as fire spewed from the man's fingertips.
It was a picture of her mother, sleeping in a bed of flowers.
Dexné reached for it.
Black ashes crumbled in her palm.
She stopped struggling, and leaned limply against the man; the fight had gone out of her.
Fire. Black coat. A glimpse of red hair in the arid breeze. Axel must have notice her open eye, for he moved his arm to fully block her sight once more. It was then he would whisper in her ear, gentle and consoling.
But after she woke she could never remember what he'd said.
She was scared. He had her restrained, he was burning her memories, and she feared he'd burn her next.
But he did not. Every time she fell into the dream, he did not burn her. He held her close. They would stand there, she shakily, and he steadily. He would not let her see, and no amount of pleading or fighting made him stop. Eventually it would be over and he would let her go, let her see again. And when he did, all she saw was ashes.
The grass, the thorns, her photos—ashes.
Her memories.
All ashes.
tHe AsHes fEll like sNoW
She would look at him then, aghast and frightened. She could see he was sad, but not sorry. Steel crept in his eyes. Not sorry.
The short night was made long by the fitful dream.
Each time it roped her back into its illusion it was the same, but with minor differences.
Sometimes she would know the man was Axel right away, and she'd go limp against him. She didn't want to fight him, even though she didn't want her photos to burn either. And sometimes she could decipher his whispers. But when she woke they were nothing more than fleeting imprints on the brain, like a footprint in sand washed away by the sea. But the sea was black with soot, and the sand ash.
𝕗𝕒𝕝𝕝𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕥𝕙𝕣𝕠𝕦𝕘𝕙 𝕒𝕤𝕙𝕖𝕤
The morning came too early for her weary body, but her mind was relived to escape to reality. And it was odd. Dexné could have sworn, long ago, the opposite held true.
Dexné did not leave her room until she had checked her reflection twice over, with hood in place. Even then she made it to the Grey Area before anyone else.
The empty space looked no different from the night before, except for the fact the lights were on full brightness instead of the dreary dim lighting suited so occupants of the dwelling could distinguish night from day in the world with constant black sky. Dexné went to the glass wall, looked out at the golden heart hanging in that black canvas.
What were you thinking of? she wondered. Did you have nightmares too?
She stood where Lea—Axel stood. She turned the ideas around in her head. What could he have to sweat about in the night? What horrors kept him awake?
Dexné glared up at the heart in the sky. What relief did he hope to find from you?
"Dexné."
She turned at the sound of Saïx's voice.
He entered from the dark hall, stood but a few feet away from her. His golden eyes were hard as stone. "Why are you standing around? You know your mission; the same one you keep failing. Find the imposter."
"…As you say, my liege."
A Dark Corridor hissed to life, black tendrils beckoning, but as Dexné started towards it she stopped, head turned back to Saïx. Her hand gripped something in her pocket, and before she could argue with herself she approached her superior. "Axel will be late today. Please give him this."
Saïx eyed the vial of elixir with little interest. "You should keep it for yourself. Perhaps then you might actually succeed."
His rebuttal did not faze her like it should have. No, she was far too tired for it to affect her.
"Please give him this," she rasped, arm held out like a steel rod, refusing to budge unless accommodated. "And please tell him to get more sleep. He shouldn't wander the halls at night."
Saïx stared at her for a long time.
Her arm did not move; the elixir still presented.
Eventually he took it, though slowly, and without looking away from the black hole of her hood.
She exited through the waiting darkness, wondering if it was wise to be so bold.
A/N: Let me know what you think?
Also, I keep forgetting to mention I have artwork of Dexné, Lea, and Isa on my deviantart. The link is on my profile if you're interested.
Thanks for reading.