kh_drabble | (no subject)

Challenge: [147] If Only
Title: That's Okay
Wordcount: 562
Notes: Naminé-ending-fic. It's almost too subtle and I haven't written Naminé like ever.

The school's art room was cool and quiet that Friday, and Naminé was painting a photograph.

The canvas was heavy and the oil paints were frightening, strange, and colorful in a hand that was used to scribbling hurriedly with pale crayons or pastels. But she needed them if her photo was going to look real, and it needed to look real.

She tugged at Kairi's itchy cotton tie as she worked. Regression, she thought, I'm going backwards. From witch to warrior to child. Every day, every hour, every minute, now, she was getting younger and weaker and smaller. Infancy was next and then -- vanishing! Back to the great black void she had emerged from, deep in the tunnels of her Other's subconscious or hidden somewhere in the deep dark sky. And a thousand years from then, she'd be born full-grown and live until her birth day again.

That was okay. She wasn't scared. But she was leaving for an awfully long time, and Sora and Riku and even Kairi would be dead, or reborn, and far away from her.

She wanted them to remember her face. At least.

So her self-portrait was her photograph, painted from a dim and blurring memory-image of herself. Eyes, almost too big for the face and so blue, so empty, it hurt. Lips that weren't there at first glance but well-defined, steady, and strong -- just pale -- when you looked again. Hair painted strand by strand, every one textured and pale-gold colored and fine.

She thought it looked alright. She guessed it had to -- it was getting late and the paint was running out.

As soon as she was done, the thoughts came but -- Sora! I never said good bye! and frantically, she looked at her photo again. It was all wrong. The eyes were the wrong blue and the skin was darker, Kairi-tan. The background was dull and she had never looked so eerie, not even in her darkest hour in her own mind! -- but it was all panic.

After all, Sora didn't remember her, and she knew her Sora had been someone else entirely, someone with manipulated feelings and no memory. So there was no one to say good bye to. And the picture...even if it didn't look quite like she had once-upon-a-time, her name was painted, Naminé in the bottom left corner. And as long as they remembered her name, they might remember her, and if they remembered her, she wouldn't be quite alone when she was gone.

And it would be good, not to have to be so alone...

She sat down, and the plastic chair was warm in the dying light. If only she'd had a bit more time, her portrait could have been perfect. But it wasn't bad. It was hers, after all, it proved her existence and her name and her self. She was going to go beyond birth and that was alright...

if only she'd said good bye anyway, she thought. But it was night and it was a small thing, really. If only Sora remembers me one day. That was a good thought to close on, she decided. Romantic and sweet and an easy way to close the day, years, life. If only he remembers me! She took this thought with her, as her eyes closed for a sweet last hopeless dream and her consciousness faded into light.