Disclaimer: I do not own Kingdom Hearts (II), Roxas, Naminé, Tidus, etc.
Author's Note: Okay, guys. It has been ALMOST A YEAR since my last update. And I know this is totally inexcusable. Especially since we've just reached a turning point in the story and fast approaching the end! It's just…well…life happened. My exams start in two weeks and I positively stink at Science, so I'm so worried! Plus I have all this damn good-for-nothing English work. *sigh* Life sucks! I really, really missed talking to you guys!
Warning: Romeo and Juliet references. Again. I know, shoot me now.
Quick Author Babble: I really want to go to Leaky Con in July! I would kill to go, no kidding!
Chapter 18: Mourning Mercutio
Naminé watched Roxas as he slept, envying his obliviousness to their surroundings. She wished she could just faint already, slip into a peaceful blackness that would put her out of her misery.
Her fingers passed over his cheek without her command, and she could see his eyelids quiver with a slight recognition before relaxing once more. He was so beautiful; his golden hair and tanned skin so colourful; his presence too bright for the ugly, white hospital that was her mother's deathbed. Even her hand, bony and pale, seemed wrong on his face.
She could sense Tidus's presence behind her, his gloomy shadow passing over her as he drifted closer.
"Naminé," he said, his voice heavy with irritation, "just leave him. I want to go home."
Naminé's lip quivered. What home? There was nothing for them to return to but an empty house, cold and lifeless. She didn't want to walk in and have to look at what remained of her mother—a few scattered clothes and an indent on the couch in front of the TV.
She closed her eyes so nothing could fall out and replied, "We can't leave him here. You saw how he is with hospitals. He was absolutely terrified."
Roxas was the perfect excuse. An excuse for her fear to hide behind; an excuse to escape her misery; an excuse to experience love.
"Listen, Naminé!" Tidus's voice rose and his voice cracked midway through her name. Naminé kept her back to him, trying not to shake. She knew when he got upset, he was pretty much impossible to stop. Not much had changed since he was five in his tantrum days. "I am not staying in this rotting hellhole any longer! Do you hear me? I'm not letting your wimpy boyfriend ruin my…our life anymore!"
She spun around in shock and anger. "What are you talking about? What has Roxas ever done to you?"
Tidus's expression became hard, his cobalt eyes narrowing.
"Come on, Naminé. Look at him. He's just a distraction." His right hand clenched into his fist, and he gritted his teeth, the tendons in his neck bulging. "He separated you from mom. He tore us apart. That's why…that's why she…" He released a heavy breath as if he was going to cry, but the tears remained hidden behind his eyes. "If he had never asked you out, none of this would have happened! Mom wouldn't have stressed over you and you would have been there at home—"
"Enough!" shouted Naminé.
"NO, NOT ENOUGH!" he screeched, and they both jumped at the terror in his voice. Tidus slammed his fist against the door, flexing his fingers slowly and taking in a few calming breaths. His voice strained, he said, "Nothing will ever be enough. Mom is dead. And it's that bastard's fault, and he doesn't even care." His eyes took on a watery sheen and he impatiently rubbed at them.
"Roxas had nothing to do with this," Naminé interjected quickly, but she felt shaky. She didn't doubt Roxas's innocence, but his effect on her, she suddenly realized, may have very well played a huge part in her mother's end. She had been too careless. She wasn't supposed to be that happy. She hadn't even noticed the suffering in her own home, she was so busy with lousy love. Tidus was right. Maybe everything had stressed her out. Maybe if she had been there that night, she could've stopped it, she could've known how. "Don't go placing blame. Mom's death was completely natural. And just because you're upset, you can't take it out on other people."
Nothing had quite sunk in yet. She felt like the words spilling out of her mouth carried no weight, and by Tidus's scoff, she could tell he thought the same.
"Jeez, Naminé, I'm just so sick of—"
A groan cut through his sentence and Naminé's head snapped back to see Roxas shifting underneath the white hospital sheet. His hand reached up to his hair and pulled at it with such ferocity Naminé thought a chunk would come out. She gripped his other hand, a sudden rush of worry and shock washing over her, brushing her mother, for a quick second, out of her mind.
"Roxas? What's the matter?"
His voice came out in a slurred, whiny drawl. "Ah, God. My head. It hurts…" He made a hissing sound with his teeth, his eyelids wrinkled with pain. Naminé grimaced guiltily, adding pressure to her boyfriend's hand. He had blacked out so suddenly and her attention had been so taken by her mother, she had barely noticed him going unconscious beside her. Needless to say, when he collapsed, the back of his head hit the floor with a loud, squishy thump. Two nurses were called in, and the female nurse started squealing when she noticed that the unconscious man was in fact Roxas Hernandez. The male nurse didn't seem very impressed.
"I'll get a nurse," said Naminé, and began to get up. But Roxas's hand held her back.
"No need. It's just a headache." With another quiet hiss, he sank into his pillows and was quiet. "Look at me. I'm pathetic. You should be the one resting, not me."
Naminé opened her mouth to say something like "don't be like that", but all that came out under the surveillance of Roxas's concerned sapphire eyes were a few racking sobs and a flood of tears. Roxas's worried expression swam before her when she opened her eyes.
"W-What am I going to do?" she sniffled. The question suddenly burned hard in her mind, like someone had branded it onto her brain.
"Do?" Roxas asked patiently.
"I don't know what to feel." She wiped at her watery eyes. "I don't know how I'm supposed to deal with something like this. I've known for a long time that this would happen someday, but I never thought…thought I'd be this confused. And…" The whole world went blurry again. "Alone." She released another sob. Thinking of her mother left her in a complete state of bewilderment. When her father had died, she had her mother to comfort her. But now she had no one. She felt a sense of loss so deep that it was like an open wound on her heart, but at the same time she wanted to push herself to think practically and how she was going to handle Tidus, work, and the house on her own. She was now, officially, the head of the family, and she felt isolated—trapped—in her own emotions and responsibilities.
Roxas took her hand gently in his. "You aren't alone. You have me."
Tidus coughed from behind her. "And me," he reminded them. His voice was a little shaky, and Naminé couldn't help smiling when he said, "You'll always have me."
xXx
Words could not explain the suffering Naminé felt as she stared at her empty house. Nothing looked quite right. The usually buzzing living room was empty, the air seemed mustier than usual, and there was a heavy dampness that chilled Naminé to the bone.
"This house is dead," she muttered between her clenched teeth. "Gone like my mother." She could feel Roxas's eyes watching her, but was too ashamed of her current fury with her mother's seemingly unfair abandonment that she couldn't face him.
Tidus wordlessly stumbled up the stairs, but before closing his bedroom door, mumbled a "goodnight" even though it was only five o'clock. Naminé took this to mean he wasn't going to be having dinner that evening. She didn't seem to have much of an appetite herself, really. She glanced at the living room her mother had consistently inhabited and carefully went around it on her way to the kitchen. She could sense Roxas's ghost of a presence following her noiselessly, waiting with infinite patience for her to speak, but her heart felt empty, and her brain was seemed to be full of bees, buzzing so loudly that no thought could be heard.
Seeing her pale, lifeless body with glassy eyes that would never open again had been merely a nightmare. Coming home without her was a dreadful and unwelcome reality that shook her up so badly she felt like she would never be whole again. Naminé was an untuned radio, unable to communicate with anyone except through a continuous, silent scream.
She thoughtlessly took out their family-sized Sunny-D and poured herself a glass.
"Sunny-D?" she offered Roxas in monotone. "It's not much, but it's all we have."
He gave an agreeable nod and the weakest of smiles and she poured again. But this time, right before her eyes, the silky stream of liquid slowly turned from orange to red, watery into thick, until she was pouring her own mother's blood from her butchered lungs, the vengeful laughter of the tumor that sucked at her life until there was nothing left. Naminé released a choked squeak and the plastic bottle fell to the floor, spilling out seventy-five percent of its contents along the way. Almost immediately, the blood morphed back into Sunny-D, where it lay harmlessly drowning in its own juices. Almost as if on cue, Roxas and Naminé dove to save it in the same second, resulting in a clunking of skulls and a pain that Naminé could not feel. Roxas could certainly feel it, judging from his yelp, but then ignored it and unquestioningly started mopping up the tangy puddle with a continuous stream of paper towels. Naminé watched as one by one, the absorbent white papers met their soggy fate. She watched Roxas's face, the only thing in her world that still seemed unbroken, and his blue eyes, rimmed with concern but coloured deeper with sensitivity. With a peculiar fascination, she took in his angelic features, his dutiful hands as he worked, his bent knees, one wet from landing in Sunny-D, his tousled hair and creased clothes from endless hours of worry.
Inexplicably, she suddenly felt such a passionate and overwhelming love for him that she almost choked on it. She had to suck in oxygen; it was so hard to breathe. How could such a perfect creature, an anomaly of a human being, care about her grotesque, soulless self? She was sure that if someone cut her open, they would just find an endless blackness and iciness.
"Naminé?" Roxas spoke, his voice shockingly clear through the static in her head.
"Hm?" Naminé replied, calmly ignoring her deeply-rooted love and sorrow as they took turns trying to kill her.
"What's on your mind?" His voice was smooth and warm, like the scent of cookies in the oven – inviting and loving, trying to lure her into confiding in him.
"Nothing," she answered truthfully, and the buzzing grew stronger, the chokehold of love cutting off her windpipe as Roxas's cerulean eyes traveled back to the task at hand in disappointment.
"Okay," he said, his voice agreeable and unquestioning, but his expression violently opposed him.
xXx
It was late, around ten o'clock, and Roxas and Naminé had exchanged no words since the Sunny-D incident. Naminé had just ended up throwing hers down the sink when the sickly sweetness of the drink made her bitter heart scream in pain. Naminé loved sugar, and she wanted nothing that she valued to be near her. She wanted to be nothing but miserable, just disappear into the dark depths of her depression. Roxas's insistence to stay with her made this very difficult. Even though he had never told her he would stay, she knew that he wouldn't leave.
They'd been sitting at the counter most of the night, Naminé listening to her unnerving swarm of bees as they fought against the confines of her skull for freedom. She had no idea what was entertaining Roxas for so long, but he made no attempt to speak or find something to amuse himself.
Naminé, as suddenly and strongly as she had felt her adoration for Roxas, needed a change of scenery. She stood from the counter breakfast stools and made her way to the small, peeling dining table. This time, she did not check if Roxas was following her. She let her eyes travel over the plank of wood, thinking of all the meals she and her mother had shared on it, all the memories she had taken for granted. Just as she could feel her tears escaping, her gaze hit an alien thing that did not belong in any of her memories with her mother. It was refreshing and a little sad as the vision of her young self and her mother and their buffet of remembered food disappeared due to the object's magnetic pull to reality. She picked it up—a cheap, dog-eared paperback that looked like it had survived World War II. After a quick once-over, it became more familiar.
"Romeo and Juliet," Naminé stated out loud, just because the constant noise in her head made it possible for her to register it internally.
"What?" Roxas asked quizzically from behind her.
"Romeo and Juliet," she repeated. It made her feel a bit better to be able to converse normally. "Tidus's English homework over the summer."
"Ha! High school. Those were the days."
Naminé could imagine Roxas in high school, being popular and beautiful and good at everything. She could see crowds of students parting so he could pass by.
"I bet you had it easy, Mr. Popular," she said, allowing herself a dry laugh.
"Mr. Popular! Good one." Roxas shook his head. "Believe it or not, Naminé, I wasn't always famous. In fact, at my old school I was this big drama geek. The other guys would push me around all the time." He rolled his eyes. "Small-town bastards. Glad I got the hell out of the there."
Naminé stared at him. Try as she might, she couldn't imagine Roxas not being famous. She couldn't see how anyone could look at him and not immediately admire him, let alone think of him as inferior.
The cacophony in her head became so loud that she had to distract herself from the troublesome thought. She began flipping through Romeo and Juliet, skimming through vaguely familiar passages that she remembered from the distant past. Her smooth flipping was interrupted by a particularly crinkled page, but when she went to manually turn it, she found herself staring at what she found to be the most tragic point in the play, when Romeo's best friend Mercutio is killed in a duel.
"'O Romeo, Romeo, brave Mercutio's dead!/That gallant spirit hath aspired the clouds,/Which too untimely here did scorn the earth,'" she read. She could feel Roxas's fixed gaze on her back, but continued anyway. "'This day's black fate on more days doth depend;/This but begins the woe…'" The lines were suddenly blurry, spiralling into an illegible barcode.
"Naminé." Immediately Roxas's arm was around her. Suddenly she could feel it, the warm tracks of her tears already drenching her face. She didn't know what to do; the buzzing was so loud that she couldn't even hear her own voice. Any attempts at a sentence turned into sputters. She screamed, to get over the noisy wall, so Roxas could hear her.
"Why did Mercutio have to die?" she screeched. "He didn't do anything! Nothing! So why was he killed? Why? Why did he die?"
By the end of her rant, the words were nothing but gargling screams; Roxas slowly sank with her to the floor, where she buried her face in his shoulder and screamed and cried some more, until she had no more voice or water left in her body.
When she had finished, she was shaking so hard from the shock of her release she didn't even realize the buzzing was gone. The silence and Roxas's warmth made her instantly calm, only releasing the occasional hiccup now and then.
"I loved Mercutio," she said in a hoarse whisper, so quiet even Roxas could barely hear.
"Everyone loved Mercutio," he replied, and she nodded at that, for she knew it to be true.
I KNOW. I AM SO DEEP.
…Not. Yay for ridiculously obvious metaphors!
At the end you will notice that I have a much better flow than in the first half. That's because I HAD MAJOR WRITER'S BLOCK for a good half of this chapter. So my writing sucked! I hope you managed to read this monstrosity until the end, so you can see my apology here! Sorry for such a terrible update! You'd think it would be good after all that time!
So sorry!
Thank you so much for reading!
And I love me some reviews! (Even though I probably lost, like, half my readers in the past year.)
TTYL!