In a universe where everyone is born with numbers on their wrists counting down to when they’ll meet their soul mate, send me 00:00:00 for my muses reaction to their numbers hitting zero when they meet yours.
From the moment that she had been created, there had been a clock on her wrist. Something that constantly moved, constantly ticked down, closer and closer to zero—and she had no idea what it meant. What it could possibly mean, for her, and no one told her. Not until she was placed in that room, not until they had left her alone for an unknown period of time, and she never asked. Instead she watched, because it was almost something of a lifeline to her.
When they, them with their black cloaks and their bright hair and sharp eyes and unforgiving faces, told her, they had used simple words. Words that she could understand, though still she said nothing, had not said a single thing since they had dressed her in white, since they made her the other—a spot of white against their canvas of black. But she took in their words, and shielded them in her empty chest, holding them close.
A countdown. Once that ticked down the hours, minutes, seconds until she met her soul mate, the person who was meant to complete her in ways that she could not even imagine.
Would this person make something happen, suddenly? Would they fill the emptiness that seemed to eat her alive from her chest outwards? Would they make something pound and draw forth something from her? Would they drive her to speak, to open her mouth and let something slip? Would they let her finally, finally hear her own voice? Would they fill something in her, something that she knew was missing and made her imperfect, unwhole?
Naminé sincerely hoped so.
She hoped that they would have a kind smile and make something inside of her feel warm and alive. She hoped that they would take her away from this place she was being held to somewhere more colorful, somewhere like the images that suddenly splashed across her mind. She hoped that they would help her understand these abilities that these people kept telling her she had.
And most of all, she hoped that they would help her understand love.
The day that she had called out to a boy whose heart was cluttered but whole and warm and welcoming was the day that they, the Organization members, told her that they could bring her to her soul mate, but only if she did something for them. Something that only she could do. And she agreed, wordlessly, soundlessly, because what could she do?
They asked her to open up the heart, the memories, of the boy who came, and she did. He had arrived to the castle that she was placed in, full of gusto and wanting something, to save someone, and there was something warm about him. Looking through his memories… finding out more about him, changing things slowly but steadily, until she had blotted out the face of the person who was most important to him. She found that his name was Sora, simple and pure as the sky on a cloudless day, and something in her chest stirred when she looked at him as she walked through his memories.
She had stopped looking at her wrist.
It had taken her a few times going over the memory, the memory of when that girl had fallen from the sky with her beautiful bright red hair and had appeared in Sora’s life, to realize something. Never before had she looked at his wrist—because all around her, all of the Organization members’ wrists were all at the end of their timers, yet she saw no soul mate for any of them. After a while, she stopped wondering why—but when she finally did, she realized as he helped up the girl, Kairi, that his timer ticked down, and down, and down.
After that she stopped thinking of him so warmly, and instead returned to her job as she was meant to, though it was only after he began to become determined to find her, the false girl who did not belong in his happy memories, that she wondered. Quietly, to herself, because she had not yet spoken, had not bothered to utter a word just yet, though it was only minutes later that she did.
Larxene had spun towards her with a cruel smile on her face, a look in her eyes that was both manic and sad, as if she knew what great pain felt like. Her eyebrows arched high above her eyes and she said, her voice soft and musical and cruel, cruel, cruel, ”Sora? He’s standing in your way of meeting your soul mate, little witch,” and disappeared in a swirl of darkness. And so she continued to alter and change the memories of the boy who was looking so desperately for her, and she wondered if the thing that made her chest feel so tight was sadness in response to him.
Sora did not deserve to have the memories of his soul mate taken away.
When the chance to go find him and admit the truth and apologize desperately for everything that she had done came she took it, running out of the room that she had been kept in, leaving Axel behind. Axel whose counter was also at zero, and for a moment she wondered how long it had been at zero, had long ago he had met his soul mate. Who his soul mate was, and how much they meant to him, if he still had his soul mate somewhere by his side.
As she ran, as she crafted a being for herself for Sora to find, it was only then that she had glanced down at the counter on her wrist, and she had almost faltered and stopped altogether when she realized that the numbers were getting smaller and smaller, and there was so little time left. What did that mean? Was her soul mate near? Who was it? Someone who she had not met yet? It had to mean something, anything, because it was getting closer and closer and closer—
Sora turned around, and saw the her that was not her for the first time.
The hero whose memories she changed and altered turned around and saw the her that was not her, who was not really supposed to be her, and smiled such a wide, happy, relieved smile. On his wrist the counter flashed zeroes, zeroes that had been that way for years, years and months and eons, and he ran towards the illusion of her who was supposed to be Kairi, so happy to see the girl who he thought was his soul mate.