Stolen Breaths

Summary: I only wanted you near me. Did I have to hide in the shadows just to admit that? Why did you make me stop breathing? /Naminé/

If I could feel, I could admit countlessly, shamelessly, everything I'd give to have him with me. . . Always. I was like a child without a mother: helpless, defeated, and tied up in lonliness more fragile and sheer than my glassy "heart," which had been easily broken. . .

Whenever I'd whisper his name, wishing he'd come back to me, it'd make the glass shards break more, making it impossible to pick them up.

Before he arrived, I was threatened and played with like the doll in the cage, each wrist grabbed and pulled with an order to erase his memories. . .

And he sacrificed everything for me. Memories of his good times with friends, light of adventures . . .

. . .of her. . .

. . .just to see me.

Was that the only way for him to "remember" me--to enter his heart as if I was allowed to? Wasn't there an alternative?

If so, it probrably would've been to tell him the truth the first time. . .

Both Number Eleven and Sora were the first to be able to silence my breathing, ever.

Marluxia made me lie to Sora. I didn't want to, and even trying to tell him that crushed me inside with fear. Whenever he'd touch my shoulder, I wouldn't breathe. I'd avoid looking at those colbat daggers and those rose-colored lips that would deviously smile at me.

But it was different with him.

When his hands were in mine, my breath was caught in my throat as he said those comforting words to me: saying he'd finally found me and had been through a lot just to. His eyes were radiant, moonlit pools of sapphire that were sweet and caring. And his smile was of accomplishment and joy from seeing me "again."

But nonetheless, I was never flattered or speechless for those reasons. I made him think he was "seeing me after so long" based on the memories I put inside, forcing him to think he "loved" me.

He never loved me. He loved her, through me.

I was her shadow. Only beautiful to him because she was beautiful. I had moments and memories with him just like she did, but she had him in her life ever since she came to those islands. I did not. I failed to make it even seem so.

When I made him try to remember her, I wasn't breathing then, either.

Instead, I blinked back the tears along the corners of my eyes, the ones he urged for me not to let fall. He didn't want me sad. . .

But it's not like I felt sadness, jealously, or fear anyway.

I was broken apart when I told him the truth, jade-colored whenever he tried to remember Kairi, and terrified whenever I thought about what Marluxia might do to punish me for what I'd done.

That charm was supposed to be a promise to remember, one of a goodbye that would soon turn into a reunion, even before I "existed." I had to prove my half-existence somehow. And lying was the only way.

That reunion never came. It was on hold when I put him to sleep and entered his heart to set things right.

As I rewrote his memories to their original form, I drew them all out, ripping out the ones with me in them smiling, something I'd done only when he was there. As I performed this task, tears fell, Sora. Down my eyes and dripped onto the coarse paper marked with corrections formed from waxy crayons.

You couldn't keep this one promise. You promised you wouldn't make me cry, but you did. . .

. . . by stealing my breath just to leave me all alone.

This was sad for me to write, and I wanted to express the pain Naminé might've felt when Sora couldn't remember her after 'Chain of Memories.' Thanks for reading and please review, no critiques please and thank you!