❝ ⠀ⁿᵃᵐⁱⁿᵉ ? ⠀❞

Strelitzia doesn't feel very many emotions. Or, she hadn't, before Sora joined their shared prison. A too - small cage, and the newest inhabitant hasn't learned the rules yet. The part of Strelitzia that should have died in the dark little room, reaching for sun and not getting it, hopes he never has to. The part of Strelitzia that grew from the corpse wishes for something else.

Sora is so warm and still so alive. Maybe that's why she's feeling again. Why she's wanting again. It's so petulant, pedestrian, this jealousy in her gut. It's concern, too, yes, and anger, yes, that too, for Sora's sake, because Yozora is violent with Sora. He breaks the boy again and again. But above all of that, it's envy. It isn't fair. Yozora has been her jailer longer.

( i need to snuff it out, he thinks, before it causes trouble. )

❝ give him what? ❞ he presses, takes a single step closer. he knows, in a sense; she's seen the aftermath of it. yozora wonders if she'd helped in any way, picked the crystals off of him, scrubbed him clean of blood. it'd make sense. it'd be something she'd do. maybe she thinks she can shield sora from the worst of it. maybe she thinks she can stop his deterioration. ❝ you want me to hurt you? ❞

( selfish, selfish, selfish girl. )

DIDN'T WANT YOU TO KNOW ABOUT THE UGLIEST PARTS OF ME. Her head ducks. That she understands. Riku has seen her so weak / so pathetic / so hurt that he couldn't see Kairi past Kairi's pain. Kairi can't see Riku past Riku's. Her hands press to her face / Xion's face / Naminé's face.

❝ ... i know, ❞ he says finally. he sits down next to her, drawing his knees to his chest. but he's looking at her, properly. ( seeing her for the first time in years. ) here, she looks ... she's just kairi. he's not seeing her reflection in others, nor is he── looking at just her pain. it hits him, then; he doesn't know her at all anymore.

( when was the last time he saw her so tired? she's been angry at him before, miserable, he's seen that. he's even seen her dead and dying. but she scrubs at her eyes and draws herself in and riku realizes it's something unfamiliar, and that── hurts. just a bit. does he even remember the curve of her smile? he wants to. he thinks he does── the blurry image of it, maybe. but it's so easy to slot naminé or xion in her place, too.

... when was the last time he let himself see her? )

❝ i'm a bad friend, ❞ he says. it's quiet, overlapped with the soft crash of waves. ❝ i thought that, 'cuz they weren't actually you ... it was fine. ❞ and that hurts too, doesn't it? he'd figured out naminé's tricks quickly enough. he saw kairi in xion once then never again. but only because they weren't her, considered them less than her── that's awful too, isn't it? ❝ i told myself they were just using your face. ❞

"Yeah. I was here, before, in my old body, but — but I think this new one must be better, because the colours are so much brighter. And the sounds, the water on the beach — it all sounds more real, too." She bends, searching for shells in the sand. It doesn't feel real / is it really all right for me to exist? / it feels like something that will be taken away, eventually — another something she'll be made to give up for the sake of people more real. Naminé sentenced her to death, once, however gently. It's hard not to wonder if she'd do it again / it's harder, to know the answer with such certainty. But Naminé was sentenced to death, too.

( penance, perhaps. she does not know if she should be on this island in the first place, after all she's done, afraid that if she breathed too loudly── stepped too recklessly── that it would swallow her up. sometimes she looks at xion and thinks that she'd do the same. that, at least, she's not afraid of. )

it’s a vow we make to each other; let’s wear rings of the same colour 

she often finds herself drifting between real &. make - believe, between ghost &. girl. most days, she knows the difference — she knows what she is and she knows who she is. logic, of course, only goes so far when a newly formed heart is still such a fragile thing ( strange, then, how it feels so heavy! she wonders if she will ever grow used to the weight of her heart &. the burden it brings ). roxas helps. these little moments help; the ones where she is surrounded by every other person who has fought &. earned their hard - won heart. before she can get caught in the war of her own mind, she reaches out to take the shell as if it's been done countless times before ( and, really, hasn't it? they both have quite the history with these shells ).

the texture of sand and salt is familiar — for her, this time, and not just a fabricated memory — and so she holds tight to it. the pad of her thumb runs against the shell, and the grit of sand grounds her.

the significance is not lost on her; she'd left countless for him when he'd been comatose &. she had left one as a final goodbye. this time isn't a goodbye; to xion, it signifies something better, something kinder — a new start, perhaps. or a continuation of where they'd left off before the world had cut what could have been between them short.

the hand not gripping the shell reaches out to find his. their fingers intertwine and this, too, is something grounding. real. roxas is real. xion is real. the sound of the ocean and the merriment of the others nearby... all real. right now, she isn't lost or drifting or a ghost. right now she exists in this moment, with him.

It's silly, probably —— she's dead, after all, a corpse that died in the dark, kept in a gilded cage by a man and the boy he keeps on a leash. It's silly to be afraid of crowds when they can't even see her, let alone touch her. Somedays, she's not afraid of them. Today, though, Strelitzia is. Hates being in the cage. She hadn't realizing being out would be worse, it's been so long since her last day like this.