Fic: Meeting Namine

[splinteredstar]

Finally, the second piece of this series is done. Took me a while to edit, but I think it works, now. Kairi is difficult and Namine more so. If I messed them up, let me know.

First piece is here: splinteredstar.dreamwidth.org/106264.html

Post KH2
Kairi had always been different, but this was even stranger.

 

Light snuck into the kitchen slowly, unnoticed over his cooling tea. He sighed, because the world was different now, and his daughter Kairi had always been strange and perceptive, from the day he found her –

-but she moved differently now, and maybe it was joy at her best friends returning or maybe it was young love,  or maybe it was her own time spent gone – but sometimes she went too still, too quiet and she would smile like she didn’t quite recognize him.

A sound from the living room made him jerk his head up, but it was too early for Kairi to be up on a weekend. He straightened, alarmed, because Sora would be louder, knocking on the front door with a wide smile and Riku, he was starting to realize, wouldn’t be heard at all. He still didn’t know which one of those boys was dating his daughter and was starting to have the sneaking, terrified suspicion that maybe, it was both.  

He slipped out of his chair. Most morning he’d already be there, watching the sunrise from the tall windows, but he’d lingered over his tea and contemplation.  

He stopped in the doorway and blinked, because for half a second he hadn’t recognized his own daughter with the sunrise turning her hair gold like that, but it was gone in the next moment.

She turned suddenly and colored pencils clattered on the floor. “Oh,” and there it was again, or maybe it was the glare of the sunrise that made her look like a stranger, “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were up.”

“It’s okay,” he said, edging closer, “I’m usually up this early.” Kairi knew that, or at least he thought she had.

She had pad of paper in her lap, and from where he stood he could see the smear of color that was the Island’s sunrise. His breath caught, for a second, because glancing at it was enough to put the sun in his eyes and the taste of dew and sea-salt in his mouth as memory slammed into his mind –

-sitting on the beach with her mother, young and in love , blinded by love and the sunrise –

She clutched the paper to her chest for a moment. He blinked away the memories – hadn’t thought of that morning in years – and knelt to pick up a pencil that had rolled near his foot. It was bright red and long, barely used. He handed it to her, smiling, feeling a bit like he was coaxing a shy kitten. “The tip broke when it fell, I’m sorry.”

She took it hesitantly, rubbing her fingers over the tip. “It’s okay. I didn’t need a sharp point.” She set the pencil on the nearby table, but didn’t start drawing again.

“It’s beautiful,” he said, because she was his daughter and because it was true, a smear of purple-red fading into pink fading into blue over the ocean. “I didn’t know you drew.”

She looked down – shy, so shy, he almost didn’t believe it was his daughter – and brushed her fingers over the beach, frowning before picking up a yellow pencil and fading  the sand a little bit more gold. “Thank you…” She bit her lip, “It’s…  new.” She finally said, smiling apologetically, “I’m not very good yet.”

“Nonsense,” to both perhaps, because she worked easily and confidently, shading in a patch of green scrub almost without looking, “It looks amazing. “ Maybe it was a father’s pride but not entirely, and she blushed. “I’ll let you finish, then.” He patted her shoulder, and left her in the sunrise with a fragile surprised smile on her face.

~

He had a meeting on the mainland the next day, so he left early enough that he didn’t catch her. He stayed on the mainland a while afterwards, searching through the shops. It’d been a while since he’d brought anything back for Kairi – a while since she’d asked for anything, which may have conveniently coincided with her being old enough to go herself.

But something in yesterday morning – something in her spiderweb-fragile smile, in her surprise – made him wander through an art store. He didn’t have the slightest idea what he’s looking for, a new set of colored pencils maybe, but stopped in front of the sketchbooks and thought, yes.

Levels of quality were a mystery, and prices had stopped making sense the moment he walked in – a tube of paint cost how much? – but between his guesses and the assistance of a nearby customer, who thought him buying something for his daughter was adorable, he managed to go home with something reasonable tucked under his arm.

Kairi blinked at him when he held it out for her, but then she smiled, blindingly bright as always, and bowed her thanks. The strange quiet shyness was gone and she was just his daughter again, no more unusual than she had always been, since the day he found her asleep on the beach.

He didn’t see her use the sketchpad for another week, though.

~

He finished his tea and rinsed out the cup. He slipped into the living room – and paused in the doorway, smiling, because Kairi was already there, looking out the window, her sketchpad in her lap. She stopped and glanced at up – but he smiled at her and said, “Don’t mind me, I’ll stay out of your view.”

He settled on his reading bench – not his favorite spot to spend the sunrise, but it was, as promised, out of her view of the beach. She smiled at him, strange and almost sad, before putting her pencil back to paper.

Sunrise had always been his time of medication and relaxation, but the addition of Kairi drawing somehow didn’t make it any less peaceful, his daughter as quiet as a shadow. When the sun was up properly she set her pencil down let him see the picture – the beach in shades of grey and black, and the beginnings of a group of figures in the center – he counted in his head, one two three, four five six. If it had just been three he might have frowned, but six was okay.

So he just said, “It’s lovely,” and left for work.

~

They shared more silence mornings, Kairi sketching or coloring as he drank his tea and relaxed. He watched the sketch of the beach grow deeper, richer – but of the figures on the beach, only three gained any detail, Sora’s spikes and the sweep of Riku’s shoulders and Kairi’s smile. The other three remained indistinct, and when he looked closer those faint spikes didn’t really look like Wakka at all. It made him frown, but this felt like a delicate peace, and questions about the intentions of those boys would just ruin it.

Then one morning he found her already up, waiting up for him – and her skin was paler and her hair was blonder in the morning sun. She tugged on her shirt sleeves as she said,

“We need to tell you something.”

“We?” He glanced around for Riku, because he would have noticed Sora and they were the only “we” that Kairi had ever meant.

“No, not them.” She said, though she was smiling. “It’s…”  She was quiet for a moment, head tilted like she was listening to something. “There are bits I can’t tell you yet, but, we wanted to explain.” She swallowed. “You didn’t know that I draw? Well, I don’t.” He blinked – and in that half second his daughter was overlaid with another girl, white blonde and pale and washed out blue eyes – and her voice changed when she said, “I do.”

….what?

Her voice shifted again, and with it her posture. “We don’t really know how it happened,” Kairi said, bashful almost, “And there are a lot of things we can’t explain, not without talking to the boys first…” Her posture shifted again, and suddenly he realized that her hair wasn’t changing with the sunlight but from something else entirely. “But… you thought I was her.” She met his eyes and maybe the bright steel in her eyes wasn’t so different after all. Quieter, but the same. “You bought a sketchbook for your daughter, not for me.”

….he blinked, and then stood. “I need some tea. Would you like some?” She slowly nodded. He set the tea kettle up automatically, picked a flavor of tea blindly. As the tea began to steep, he said, testing out the idea in his mind, “So there are… two of you, in there?” Two girls in his daughter. Or only one was his daughter, but, he wasn’t sure he believed that.

She took the tea from him quietly, and nodded. “….my name is Namine.”

He sat down and sipped his tea, swallowing down the insanity.  “Okay.” How or why or what – but nothing made sense anymore, and this was just another shade of crazy, and at least, at least she was talking now.

She smiled at him, shy and grateful, and maybe that was enough.