Just a little idea I had randomly while sitting around on my day off from work.

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"A friend is a gift you give yourself."

They whispered to her, placid tones ringing through her own overactive imagination, just as they always did. This was nothing new. Naminé could tell by the way they seemed to be urging her on that today would be the day. Not just any day, but the day.

The day she would finally meet him. The real him.

It had been a long time waiting, having to worry about chaining Sora's memories back together again, only allowed to speak to Diz when he wanted to speak to her, and only to Ansem (who she had come to know as "Riku") when Diz deemed it appropriate, which wasn't very often. Naminé had a very difficult time not feeling lonely.

But she wasn't alone. She had her "friends" to talk to, their peacefully silent presense unconsciously lulling her mind into its own feeling of renewed tranquility everytime they tried to utter a sound. Sometimes they were successful. Most of the time they just broke through the blond girl's isolated barrier and burrowed deep into her milange of thoughts, rewarding her with helpful advice if she momentarily brushed off her responsibilities to comprehend them.

Every so often, Naminé paused in her deluge of curiosity to wonder what or who exactly was speaking to her. She had her suspicions. The heartless? Maybe, but she couldn't really understand the soft kyuuing noises they always made. Surely not dusks, creatures which Naminé had never detected a presense in before aside from the obvious, like movements, would have taken this sudden interest in her and tried so desperately to seek her comfort, her solace.

A true nobody's solace.

Well, at least she was willing to offer herself up as someone for them to communicate with when their tone most obviously demonstraited that they felt there was little else left in the world to be so concerned with, hence their intellect with Naminé. She was quite honored, to say the least, at being a main object of almost possessive infatuation.

Momentarily the blond was jarred out of her thoughts as a voice she recognized so well emitted into the current dull silence. Her favorite voice. His voice.

"Naminé?"

Ah, Roxas, the only other nobody Naminé really wanted to put her trust in, reguardless of his very recent memory lapse and extreme confusion that only came as a result from Naminé's own tinkering with things. True, when Roxas had still carried memories with him, his memories, not Sora's, the memories of organization XIII, he had been a little hot-headed and over-bearing. And yet, just imagine someone like Roxas giving all that power up just to find out why he had the keyblade...

Or had it been because he wanted to meet Sora? It seemed no one, not even Naminé, who was so in touch with both Roxas and Sora's emotions, had the ability to realize why certain actions had been taken. Those two could sometimes be so misleading.

Although she couldn't blame him. Not when she so badly wanted to meet Sora herself.

If Roxas was good, Sora would be better. A whole is better than a half, right?

"Naminé, what's happening to me?"

She wanted to answer, so desperately dreamed of saying something, anything to Roxas to make all of his worries just disappear; to reassure him that he had not really fallen off the very top of the train station and was not plummeting towards his death far to the ground below. No, she couldn't.

Somebody else wanted to talk for her.

This very person was the one Naminé basically owed her non-existant life to, the one to which the blond girl would forever have to pay debt, and Naminé wasn't complaining. Not in a sense that wasn't to be expected, anyway. So Naminé let her speak.

Naminé, the nobody, let Kairi, the somebody of the situation, take control and the responsibility of convincing Roxas he was going to be okay into her own hands.

Kairi was another person Naminé almost unconsciously watched out for. Even if Kairi was the very reason Naminé existed, it was still the nobody's job to watch over the princess, to be a guardian, a mentor, a saviour if need be in Sora's absence. Sora was the real protector, but in his current state, it certainly didn't seem he'd be defending much of anything.

Naminé let the conversation carry on for a minute or two, listening to the confused voices of Roxas and Kairi lightly question each other whilst trying to deduce how they were even in contact, before she heard a third, also familiar voice speak to Kairi.

"You've forgotten my name?"

Naminé giggled to herself, feeling merely a small pang of guilt reverberate throughout her body due to her procrastination of helping everyone else to remember the keybearer just as well as they used to. It was time-consuming and stressful enough just worrying about Sora.

And then there were a few who could remember Sora, had been able to remember him even before the lengthy process of memory restoration had begun to take place. Some, Naminé had expected would remember just because of their past experience with the darkness and the nobodies, but there was one person in particular she had been pleasently suprised at.

Riku, of all people, whose heart had most definately been tainted and controlled by Ansem at one point or another. His appearance now only confirmed and proved that point to a farther degree, Naminé mused, still wondering why Riku looked the way he did.

Back in reality, free from the restraints in Naminé's own mind (which really wasn't so restrained), the conversation, short-lived as it was, had ended, and Roxas had obviously blacked out again. The lack of his presense disturbed Naminé, not because she wasn't used to it, but because another that was so like Roxas still remained. At least that's what she thought. But my, wasn't she a convincing storyteller, lying to herself?

"Where... Am I?"

Looking up from the carefully-placed pictures she had been inscribing into her sketchbook, Naminé began to wonder why Sora was still able to speak amongst the silence while Roxas had faded away. Knowing full-well the brunette would expect an answer, Naminé set the chain of memories, currently endowed with a scribble of Sora, Kairi and Riku together on the Destiny Islands on the conviniently placed table in front of her. She was pleased that choosing her words carefully was not going to be necessary. The blond knew Sora would ask questions, and to what extent, but she also knew he was fairly patient, much more so than Roxas.

"The world that never was," Naminé replied out loud. "Hello, Sora. My name is Naminé."

"You sound familiar," Sora said, sounding solemn in a tone of voice Naminé had rarely heard in his thoughts, in his memories. "I feel like I know you, but I'm really not so sure. How do you..." She heard him pause, probably to rephrase his question. "How much do you know about me?"

"I know a lot of things about you, Sora," Namine insisted, honesty and compassion for the confused teen interlacing her voice as she spoke. "And I would greatly enjoy revealing all sorts of information to you, concerning everything that is happening, and your friends, but I'm afraid I am not permitted to do so because of the interminable number of restrictions placed in this barely existant world." Silence reigned supreme for the moment, Naminé content that Sora seemed to be taking it so well, considering how few things he remembered and how unmistakably irked he was.

Finally his voice reached her again. "So Riku is..."

"Doing well." This was only half true, Naminé realized with regret. Whilst she obviously knew Riku was alive, and in the custody and care of Diz and the King, she had no idea whether or not it was safe to call Riku's current appearance 'well'. But it didn't matter. By the time she finished with the restoration process, Sora would never even remember having this conversation with her. "Anything else you would like to know?"

"Yeah," Sora began. "Why did you ignore me earlier?"

"When earlier?" Naminé casually reached forward and retrieved the sketchbook off the table from where she'd left it earlier as she waited for Sora to respond. She was so tempted to draw a picture of Sora and herself together, embracing, or something sweet, but... Why? Because he was Roxas? Because Roxas was Sora? Just who exactly did she...

Was it honestly safe to say love...?

"Everytime I tried to talk to you..."

"Oh, that was you?" Naminé let out a sigh of relief, knowing now for sure that heartless and nobodies had not been trying to possess her and use her strange abilities to their own advantage. "Sorry. Half of the time I couldn't understand you. But right now I do."

Sora seemed pleased with that answer. Naminé could feel it as she resumed her drawing, nonchalantly crafting paopu fruit in the trees surrounding the teenage friends. It was almost abstract. "Naminé..."

"Hm?"

"Where are you?" That's right. He couldn't see her. He couldn't see anyone. And even though it was not in the nature of a nobody, or wasn't supposed to be, Naminé felt pity for poor Sora as she realized darkness was all he could see. Not a good thing for someone who was so used to living in the light.

"Oh, um..."

A page was abruptly torn from the sketchbook, a blank one, the cover closed as the blond girl set the paper against the solid object so she would have something sturdy to draw on. Naminé outlined the body structure and the spikey hair, and not long after, Sora was seated at the table across from her.

"I apologize... I forgot you couldn't see." Sora was too busy staring around the room, the pure, white color and all of the drawings scattered on the walls to even mutter a proper thanks. And finally, as if deciding on something, his gaze came to a rest on Naminé.

She was, to say the least, a bit suprised at the first thing he said.

"You have her eyes, and her face, but your hair... It's just so light." Naminé smiled, putting on a facade and trying to hide the new emotion threatening to swallow her-Jealousy. "I... Honestly thought you were Kairi, maybe playing a joke on me with the name or something."

"Oh..." It was the withdrawn response from a withered, lost, confused little girl who only had her sketchbook for comfort. "I see."

Sora gave a small laugh, a nervous one, Naminé could tell, though she wasn't really sure what was supposed to be so funny. "Sorry. I really miss her, and you remind me so much of her. Why do you look so much like Kairi?" The question provoked the artist in such a way, for some strange reason, but it also lifted a weight off of her shoulders, and she had no idea why.

"Well, you look a lot like Roxas," Naminé retorted, actually smiling at him. The two were very reminiscent of one another, faces, eyes, and the like seeming to exist as replicas. As it was with Naminé and Kairi, only the hair made any difference.

"Who's Roxas?" Naminé sighed. She would risk it.

"We have so much to talk about."

They did. It wasn't like Sora would remember anything, after all, Naminé insisted to herself.

And even though a nobody was not supposed to love, was not supposed to have feelings because it was meant to be a hollow shell, Naminé harbored her own emotions for Sora, through his memories and his past, not because she was in love with him...

But because she was in love with half of him. And half it would stay.

--- Fin