Author: Trilies
Genre : Romance, angst
Word length 399
Sypnosis If only for a little while, he was her hero, and so she mourns for him.
Rating PG
Yaoi/Yuri/Pairings: Naminé/Lexaeus
Paper Flowers for an Empty Grave
The first month of her time in the mansion, and Naminé is silent. Like a half-forgotten ghost, she tip toes throughout the mansion on only a rare occasion, when she needs more paper. Finally, unable to contain his curiosity and finding DiZ lacking in conversation, Riku peeks in her asylum white room to see what large project this mysterious little Nobody is undertaking.
At first, he doesn't notice the flowers, but only because they, like the rest of the room, lack any color. It's only their sharp edges, the shadows they cast, that show they even exist at all. There are dozens of hundreds of them, strung along the ceiling, scattered across the floor, and clinging to Naminé's hair as she lays, limp and looking almost dead in her sleep, on the couch.
It's almost wondrous, and it takes a moment for Riku to snap out of his daze when he sees a startling flash of color amongst all the black and white of shadows. Hooked by fascination now, he sneaks across the floor and brushes away snips of paper and more, born dead, blooming flowers.
He recognizes both of the people in the picture: Naminé is easy to tell with her wide blue eyes and yellow hair, fading into the paper just as she herself fades into her little white room. In the picture, she stands on the tip of her toes to a tall, muscular man with wavy ginger hair who leans down to meet the chaste kiss she gives to him.
Something ice-cold drops into the pit of Riku's stomach and, trying to hide the rustle of paper as best he can, begins to flip through the sketchbook, finding more soft and gentle pictures: the small girl (or is she a young woman, now?) held gently in large arms, kind giant hands giving a smaller artist's pair the gift of crayons and small trinkets of various design, the two of them just walking besides each other...
He doesn't know when, but he finally looks up, and Naminé is there sitting right across with him, a small sad smile on her face that seems too old for one so young, and Riku has to argue with himself that the past doesn't matter, that who the Organization used to be didn't matter, couldn't be treated with sympathy...
And if only things were as simple as the white paper flowers and the shadows they cast.
