kh_drabble | (no subject)

Title: Foreign
Challenge: Chain of Memories
Wordcount: 354
Summary: Marluxia, Namine, and words foreign to each of them. Slight, slight Marluxia/Namine.

When she drew it was mainly things from her own imagination, things that never existed and never would, except in the hands of another--a star-shaped keychain, a promise made under shooting stars while grasping the arms of a teddybear, a shady beach and white sand and blue water.

Whenever one of them came in, she curled up, holding the sketchbook tight against her chest, afraid of the mockery that Larxene and Axel hand out so freely. Vexen, however, never took much of an interest in her drawings, and though she'd heard of two more members of the organization that live in the castle, neither had ever visited her that she could remember.

Marluxia, however, would take the sketchbook and run thin fingers over the colors there, black gloves staining themselves pink and purple from smearing colored pencil over the page. He'd flip pages carelessly, almost roughly, but touched the drawings themselves with utmost care.

He'd leave smudges from his fingers on the page, tainting otherwise-perfect memories (that were false, even to her), and ask what each drawing was. Almost every word she said seemed foreign against his thin lips--beach, jungle, forest, mountains.

He never asked for her to make any of the memories his, and so she never did.

It was only when a boy came their way that Marluxia even suggested making the memories into something more, into someone else's.

Sora, the Keyblade Master, needed to be one of them, he'd said, looking over the sketch of the star-shaped keychain. And her memories, and skills rearranging them, were the perfect way to lure him into their ranks.

He had set the sketchbook down on the table, gentler than usual, and leaned down to be at Namine's level.

"When Sora is ours, Namine, do you know what that means?" he had said, in a near whisper, and Namine had stared up into his deep eyes under the veil of thick brown hair. "You'll have freedom, Namine. Freedom."

She had tried out the word herself then, hesitantly, lips carefully tracing the contours of the word, and it had been as foreign to her as any of her drawn memories had been to Marluxia.