Blindfolds and Treasured Words (Rikunami Fic)
“It appears we’ve come to a standstill,” DiZ said.
Naminè winced, stared up at the large stasis pod, stopped in its purpose like a flower waiting to bloom suddenly frozen over by an unexpected early-spring frost. She bit her lip in dismay. “Yes.”
“This has gone on long enough.” Every word dripped with condescension—she had failed. She knew that. “Riku—I think you know what needs to be done.”
Riku barely hesitated. “Right.”
DiZ said nothing more. He didn’t need to. Without a backward glance, as if she were merely a feature of the room rather than a person he had been having a conversation with, he left.
Riku gave a barely audible sigh.
Naminè hesitated—despite their working together for nearly a year now, she still found it difficult to initiate conversation with Riku. But it wasn’t in the same way that she found it difficult to talk to DiZ. She certainly found him intimidating—the black coat he was forced to wear certainly didn’t help matters—but not necessarily in a negative way. He was, especially of late, of few words, and thus everything he did choose to say felt important. To Naminè, his every word had weight, and it could be said that she hoarded them like a dragon does its gold. He was the only one she had to talk to, after all.
“You…don’t want to do this,” she finally said.
“I wish I’d never looked at her,” he said softly, bitterly.
Right. Because she looked like her.
She moved a few steps closer, wringing her hands anxiously. “Will you still do it?”
Riku’s mouth tightened. “I have to…don’t I?”
Naminè wasn’t even sure what answer she’d wanted. “I suppose so.”
Riku nodded, then reached back to tighten the knot on his blindfold—a gesture of resolve. She sensed he was about to go, but then, seized with a desperate need to keep talking to someone, anyone, she asked, “Do you…really need to wear that?” Without realizing what she was doing, her hand began to reach towards his face.
He caught her hand a couple inches from his nose, somehow sensing what she was doing. She nearly jumped out of her skin. “I do,” he said, still softly. It took her a moment to realize he didn’t sound angry. “It helps keep the Darkness at bay. There’s no real power in it, but it helps me visualize the Darkness still locked inside me, almost as if I’m seeing inside my own heart. If I take it off, well…the Darkness comes out. And so does Ansem. And…I don’t want you to see me like that.” He paused. “How come you’ve never asked before?”
“I…was too afraid to ask.”
“Because I scare you?” He was still holding her hand. “You’ve seen the Darkness in my heart. You can feel it.”
Naminè stared at him, wide-eyed, completely at a loss as to what to say.
He seemed to take her silence as agreement. He loosened his grip on her hand, turned as if to go. “I don’t blame you.”
Naminè grabbed his hand with both of hers before it could slip away. “No, no, it’s not—it’s just—“ She floundered for words. Riku waited patiently. “I…get nervous. I don’t get to talk to a lot of people. But you don’t scare me.”
He picked up instantly on what she wasn’t saying. “DiZ does.”
Naminè bit her lip, but didn’t reply.
Riku didn’t need to say that DiZ was overly controlling, unnecessarily cruel, out of line. They both knew it, and they both knew that there was nothing they could do about it. Sora had to wake up. He was all the help they had. So instead he gave her hand a comforting squeeze, then let it go.
Something else seemed to occur to him, though. “Tell me, Naminè…why are you doing this? Is it because of him? Or…” He seemed to glance towards the pod where Sora slumbered, though he could not see. “Are you trying to…atone? Like me?”
Naminè sighed. “A bit of both, I guess. I don’t know what DiZ would do if I didn’t play along. But mostly…I’m trying to make up for my mistakes. I haven’t been alive for very long, but in that short time I’ve caused so much trouble—for Sora, for you, for…well, everyone.” She looked back at Sora. “I have to fix everything I’ve broken. Just my existence has caused so many problems.”
“That’s not true.” Naminè turned back to him, surprised, and found that, for the first time since he had started wearing that blindfold, he suddenly seemed to look almost schoolboyish. A slight smile played across his face. “It’s been nice…having you around,” he said, scratching the back of his head.
A strange heat spread over Naminè’s cheeks, though she did not know what it meant. “Because I remind you of her?”
Riku chuckled. “Actually, no. You reminded me of her at first, but really, you’re nothing like Kairi at all. Not in a bad way,” he quickly added. She wasn’t sure if she were imagining it, but he looked a little pinker than usual. “In a good way. You’re…different.” He grew serious again. “I think DiZ is wrong. You, Roxas, Xion—you’ve managed to become your own people on your own. I don’t know how, or why, or what that means—all I know is what I can see.” He suddenly gave an embarrassed half-laugh. “Which admittedly right now isn’t a lot.”
Naminè couldn’t help but laugh at that, despite the fact that her head was spinning. Her own person. Did he really believe that? Could she ever be…?
Riku regarded her with a strange look on his face as she laughed. Then, he took her by the shoulders, saying, “Naminè. Do you still think you don’t have a heart?”
Naminè blinked. “Well, that’s what DiZ says…”
She didn’t know. She didn’t know what she thought. All she knew was white walls in endless rooms, people in black coats, and an aching loneliness she wasn’t sure was real or just a product of having a hollow place where her heart should be. What did she know about hearts, really? No matter how much she might want to know what it was to love or hate to feel sadness or joy or anger, she never could—and whatever she think that she felt sometimes was a mere shadow of the real thing, ripples of energy she pretended were emotions because of how much she wanted to feel them…right?
Riku frowned, then switched tacks. “What is it you want most?”
“—what is it that you’re drawing all the time?”
Her drawings. The drawings of him, of Sora and Kairi, of Roxas and Xion and Axel, sometimes daring to put herself among them, standing on the islands, holding hands. And smiling. Always smiling.
“I don’t think someone without a heart would want something like that, do you?” he asked gently.
Naminè just stared at him, eyes huge, unable to say a word.
He seemed to understand her silence. “I don’t think any of us really understands what Nobodies are—no matter what DiZ says.”
Naminè smiled. “Maybe not.”
Somehow, in his blindness, he smiled back. Then, letting her go, he turned and began to walk towards the door.
“Why did—why did you ask me all that?” she blurted.
Riku turned back over his shoulder, a somber heaviness coming over him. She instantly regretted her words—he had probably been trying to leave her on a lighter note. “…because when I come back, when I see you again, I might not be the same. I might have to give into Darkness to do this. I don’t want to, but if it’s a choice between giving in to Darkness or losing my best friend forever…” He clenched his fist. “…I know what I’ll choose.”
Naminè looked down, clasping her hands. “And…I’ll have to go back to Kairi in the end.” She looked up, staring into his face, getting the sense that he was staring right back, despite the blindfold. “You know that. You…you might not see me again at all.”
A sad, soft smile broke over his face, and she felt the weight of this moment, her breath hanging in her lungs, suspended, like a pendulum at the height of its swing. There was a promise in his words, the ones that she hoarded so. “Naminè…I’ll always see you.”
She would never see him with her own eyes again.
“Riku…thank you,” she whispered after him. “For talking to me.”
