kingdom hearts -- dorian
title: dorian
wordcount: 4637
rating: R
warnings: Implied sexual abuse, non-consensual sexual acts and incest.
synopsis - - - "Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty." -- The Picture Of Dorian Gray.
notes - - - Oh god. I don't know any more. All I knew was, I wanted to write something related to Dorian Gray, and. This. What. This is probably the most messed-up thing I've written to date. Evidently, it was inspired by Oscar Wilde's The Picture Of Dorian Gray, as well as the Oedipus Complex. Now, er, I left quite a bit out -- especially pertaining to Marluxia's life between his succumbing to the Darkness and being found by the Organisation. Buuuut, um, I plan on expanding on that later -- when I'm not too busy wondering just what in the blazes my mind cooks up. If I've said it once, I've said it before: Marluxia's creepy. He had to start somewhere. I think my twisted headcanon decided to assert itself. Woe betide. Related to In Memoriam. As for the drawing itself, I'll leave that up to your imaginations, haha.
It all starts innocently enough-or as innocently as anything associated with Marluxia can be.
“And how are you today, darling little honeysuckle?” he inquires sweetly, running cool, black-gloved fingertips along the line of her jaw as he speaks. “Will you sing for me, o beautiful oriole? Or would you try to stretch your pretty little wings and fly away from your cage?” At the final word, his fingers close warningly around the column of her throat and her breath hitches, a ragged gasp of fear escaping her lungs before she can stop it.
Mutely, she shakes her head, feeling the gentle pressure of his thumb lingering warningly over her windpipe; her voice seems to have deserted her, and she struggles not to look away as he tilts her chin up towards his face, tries not to flinch from his touch when he presses his lips chastely to her forehead.
“Has the sweet nightingale lost her voice? No? Then whyfore dost thou not speaketh?”
She hates it when he gets like this, when his voice takes on that dangerously silken edge and he lapses into the archaic language of his home-world. An irrelevant thought occurs to her, a tentative tendril of realisation which brushes against the fabric of her consciousness. He has a pleasant voice, Naminé thinks as she gazes into his cobalt-dark eyes, but the things which he says with it are another thing altogether.
“Is my very countenance so very frightful, ma petite cherie? Am I really that hideous to look upon, that you are struck dumb by the horror you are forced to behold? Is that it?”
Before she can respond, he crouches to meet her downcast eyes, his expression serious, sombre. His eyes are like the night sky, dark and unforthcoming, and for the first time, she is terrified of seeing herself reflected twofold in his impassive stare. “Does my face truly show the true extent of my deeds?”
“N-no,” she rasps out, and he smiles again, a frightening, raptorial grin which stretches from ear to ear.
“Good,” he purrs, as his fingers travel downwards, twining themselves in her hair. She tries not to jump when he leans close to her ear, his breath warm against her cheek. “I am glad, my blossom.”
She wonders what he will do to her today.
She steels herself for thorn-lined vines pricking against her skin, left tender and smarting from past incidents; she mentally prepares herself for the inevitabilities of his invasion of her body, resigns herself for what has now become a mundane, albeit perverse normality.
It does not come.
Instead of teeth nicking the back of her neck, instead of hands which close around her wrists and draw them away, he releases her from his embrace and walks away from her with slow, deliberate steps, towards the white-white table in the white-white room. She watches with glazed eyes as he picks up her sketchpad and drawing-tools, and sits opposite her in a stiff, high-backed chair, proffering her artisan implements to her with firm insistence.
Naminé fidgets uneasily in her seat; a low, warning hum of danger begins to throb at the base of her skull. “What are you doing?”
His expression is closed, unreadable. “Humour me, little orchid,” he says in a hushed whisper; he holds out her book to her until she takes it, and leans back in his seat with his arms crossed over his chest, a twisted grin playing along his lips.
“Now draw me,” he commands.
In the wake of his startling request, she can only stare at him, uncomprehending. “I…I beg your pardon?”
For the briefest instant, his mask of controlled satisfaction slips, and the barest hint of irritation flits across his features; he banishes them before she can open her mouth, and his face is expressionless once more, like the surface of an undisturbed midnight pool. “I wish for you to draw me.”
To hear him say such things unnerves her; she is prepared for physical pain and violation, but not this. “Why?” she grits out, lip curling as she glares at him. “Is this another one of your tricks?”
The words she spits at him are brimming with bewildered anger, searing her throat as she chokes them out. Marluxia shakes his head slowly, the arrogant smirk still stretched tautly across his face.
“Are you saying you want the other-?”
“No,” she replies coldly, ignoring the bite of her sketchpad’s spiral-wire spine digging into the palm of her hand. “Why should I draw you? Isn’t looking in the mirror enough for your narcissistic-”
His face is suddenly dark as thunder; he restrains himself with some effort, and only grins sourly at her. “I could - and should - break your pretty little neck for such impudence,” he comments candidly, and she gazes at him with murder in her eyes.
“You could,” she responds jerkily; even if she had the capacity to feel true fear, she is past caring by this point in time. “But you won’t. Y-you need me to make your plans fall neatly into place. Without me, you won’t…won’t be able to control Sora.”
“That much is true,” Marluxia comments idly, unblinking gaze boring into hers. “But that is currently irrelevant.” His eyes glitter with that cold, calculating intelligence she has come to loathe and abhor, and he leans forwards in his seat, resting his elbows on his knees. “I want to remember.”
In the face of such a cryptic statement, Naminé only stares stonily at him, but her mind is awhirl. She contemplates refusing, but the prospect of his hands on her makes her shudder; there is no choice-she has to submit to his will. “Very well,” she says at last, fingers curling so tightly around her pencil that the wood bows slightly beneath the pressure and her knuckles strain white and tense against her skin. “Very well.”
For several seconds, she sits stock-still, surveying the features of her tormenter; he seems almost harmless now, though she knows from bitter experience the speed at which his temperament can shift. She knows the swiftness with which he can move, how he can have the blade of his scythe arched behind her neck in an instant. Why? she whispers to herself as she flips open her book with a flick of stiff, clammy fingers. Why? she murmurs under her breath as she surveys Marluxia from beneath lowered lashes, unable to find any good reason behind his behaviour.
Through all of this, he bares his teeth at her in a mirthless smile. It reminds her of the pictures Demyx showed her, of the predatory grins of silent sharks right before they rip their prey to shreds.
She closes her eyes, and begins to draw.
She draws an oval for a head, sketches out rough lines which will form the framework of his body, seated in the white chair as though it is the bejewelled throne of a despot king. She adds in cursory marks, placeholders where his eyes and nose and mouth will be, scrawls out the shape of limbs and loose folds of black leather, and abandons herself to the familiar solidarity of knowing she is doing what she does best.
It is only once she begins to fills in his features in true that the memories start seeping into her mind.
She is in the midst of crosshatching the shell of an ear when the phantom recollection trickles into her with the stealth of a prowling panther, invading her consciousness before she even realises what it is. For an instant, she is frozen in place, muscles locking against her will at the sight of memories which are not hers, and then she sees the vague outline of two people, blurry silhouettes whose outlines remain stubbornly vague, as though perceived through spiderweb-cracked panes of frosted glass.
What is this? she tries to ask, but no sound comes out. What are you doing to me?
There is no response. When she forces her eyes open, she sees Marluxia slumped in his seat, eyes blank and glassy, lifeless as those of a slaughtered animal’s.
A chill ripples down her spine, an icicle of fear sliding between her shoulderblades. S-stop, she commands, but the voice in her head is tinny and timorous, faraway even to her own ears.
Even without realising it, she knows what is happening, in some detached and far-off portion of her mind.
When she closes her eyes, the stark halls of Castle Oblivion vanish from her sight, burned momentarily into the backs of her eyelids; she sees the blinding bleakness of white for a split second before it’s gone, all gone, and she’s standing in a darkened room illuminated only by the trembling light of a sputtering candle. The two figures are unfamiliar, nothing but strangers, but she receives a shock when she sets eyes upon the smaller of the two, a boy of no more than six years, gap-toothed and apple-cheeked, whose eyes skitter nervously to and fro.
Listen, Lauriam, a willowy girl says. The strawberry-blond boy is curled up on the bed with the threadbare sheets pulled up to his chin, chewing on his fingernails. When Naminé gazes into his face, she cannot suppress the frisson of surprise upon meeting his hauntingly familiar eyes, dark blue as chips of lapis lazuli. It’s all Hallow’s Eve tonight, and you know what that means. Scary stories! Which one-
The boy, this Lauriam, wriggles uncomfortably beneath his sheets and all but whimpers. No, he whispers, white-faced and trembling like a leaf in a gale as he pulls the covers up over his tousle-haired head. Please, you know I hate them.
Chicken, his sister says acidly, though her tone is laced with affection. Right, shove over. I’ll tell you the one about Old Man Hickory.
The boy blanches. Annisele-he snuffles, but she shushes him with a frown.
Listen, best beloved, she intones with a solemn voice, clasping her hands together as she sits straight-backed in the middle of his bed; the light of mischief glitters in her eyes, reflecting the merry dance of the candle-flame on his bedside table.
Only the upper half of his face is visible above his covers. He nods slowly, unblinkingly, and his white-knuckled grip slackens ever-so-slightly.
(She cannot stop drawing.)
Suddenly, she’s in a different time, a different place, outside the tiny little cottage she suspects is their home. They - the two children, who cannot be older than ten and twelve, and the phantom from a different time who watches them - are surrounded by fields of gold which sway in the sun. Naminé watches the scrawny boy lying on his back alongside his sister, the siblings staring up at the expanse of blue sky stretching above their heads.
D’you know what I wish for, sometimes? the girl says dreamily, a faraway look in her pale blue eyes; they’re the same colour as the cornflowers which dot the fields around them, as bright as the boy’s eyes are dark. I wish I could be a lady, or a princess, even. The boy next to her harrumphs loudly, but only Naminé hears what he says in a hushed undertone, whispered words meant for his ears alone.
I’ll be the black knight to your princess.
Did you say something?
Absently, he uproots tufts of grass and shreds them in his hands. Once he’s surrounded by the dregs of greenery, he digs his fingers into the loose, loamy soil and claws, unnoticed by his sister.
No, he says with a crescent-moon smile, an ironic curl of his lips not intended for her eyes. Must be a trick of the wind.
(She’s doodling idly at the hood-ties at his throat, and marvelling, with unseeing eyes, the way the silver catches the light.)
They’re a few years older now. She sees the two children - but they can’t be called children any more, not truly, not when Lauriam is taller than her, broad-shouldered but gaunt and dull-eyed - engaged in the midst of a passionate row, their faces tear-stained and disbelieving. The one called Annisele is thinner, more haggard, her pretty face prematurely lined with the weariness of an adult. What do you mean? she rasps, staring at her brother as though he is a stranger. A woman - presumably their mother - only cries harder into her threadbare handkerchief. The boy is whey-faced and hollow-eyed, his cheeks bloodless as he stares at his sister. The boy does not respond immediately, but his dirt-streaked face is downcast, his raggedly-cropped hair obscuring his features.
He’s dead, he says at last in a hoarse croak, fingers worrying restlessly at the hem of his scruffy shirt. Da’s dead.
You filthy little liar, the girl spits out, and then she seems to fold in upon herself; she cries and cries and cries, fragile shoulders hunched inwards as she hiccoughs into her hands. This can’t be true. It can’t.
Lauriam’s face is devoid of emotion. His voice is grey with weariness as he pulls at a thread on his fraying jerkin. I saw it with my own eyes when I went to bring Da his lunch. He saw them first, when they came a-running across the field, and he told me to run and not to stop. He pauses in his stilted narrative and glances down at the specks of red which fleck his clothes, and tries to fold the stained fabric unobtrusively out of sight.
Annisele’s eyes are wide as saucers. What happened? she whispers from between fingers splayed over her mouth.
Outlaws, he whispers, his face grim. A whole band of ‘em, led by someone they called the Assassin Princess. Th-they were on Da as fast as thinking. That ‘un outlaw - Faragond Lostface is his name, I think - knocked him down and this girl - can’t have been older than you or me - slit Da’s throat with her knife. He shivers despite himself. All mighty unnaturally sharp it was. They called her Lenera Lightningstrike.
Is Da-
They took everything valuable he had, Lauriam continues remorselessly, as, unnoticed by his mute audience, he begins to pick at crusts of drying blood caked beneath his torn fingernails. All his tools, everything. His good boots, his old signet ring…and all the money he had on him. The Lightningstrike girl, she seemed to know where he kept all his money. It’s almost as if someone told her. The whole thing-it’s as if someone set them up to it.
(Naminé can feel the unease which thickens the air she breathes, and it takes all her self-control to not choke on the sickly, cloying gasps she manages to draw in.)
She blinks, and the voices melt away. It is a little later now, a few days, perhaps, and an air of cloying despair descends over the tiny knot of mourners like a death-shroud.
It is a dreary, stom-ridden afternoon, pouring with rain. The damp earth squelches uncomfortably beneath the bereaved family’s feet as they stare mutely at the waterlogged trench before them, which fills with water from the rain sluicing into the ditch.
They have no choice but to bury what is left of their father on unconsecrated ground.
God have mercy on his soul, Annisele whispers, crossing herself; their mother wails and weeps with an animal unrestraint, and Lauriam’s grip tightens on the battered, rust-spotted scythe he used to dig the shallow grave.
His face is closed, unreadable, but a shadow stirs in his eyes.
As he tosses the first clod of earth into the pit, his sister begins to cry. How will we survive now?
(She is aware of the world dissolving around her again; she scribbles and scrawls with more urgency now, blindly drawing in eyes, lips, empty smiles. She cannot chronicle the beginning of his end quickly enough, cannot track the beginning of his downward spiral, for it happens too fast for her to track, and before she knows it the sketch beneath her hands is dark and smudged, and she realises with a start that she can’t recognise what she has inscribed upon the sheet.)
She stands by the bedside of the young man, who thrashes and sobs in his sleep. She is nothing but an artful voyeur, and even though she aches to tear her eyes away from the sight of the youth trussed up in worn sheets and whimpering like a small child, she cannot look away.
Save me, he chokes out, fingers grasping blindly at empty air. She aches to grasp them, to pull him from the clutches of his delusion; she wishes she can reshape the past, and not just the links which shape memories of it.
But that is not to be. She can only watch, powerless, frustrated, unable to alter the course of the histories she revisits.
You en’t from around these parts, sir, he murmurs during moments of lucidity. Are you the reaper, come for my soul? Are you here to pick my bones and guide me to Hell?
Woman in white, I see you, he raves, as he writhes as though possessed, back arching up from his battered mattress. Why won’t you save me? She skitters back from his bedside as though burned, and for a heartbeat his eyes are open, and he’s staring, staring at her.
My heart! he screams, once, fingers clawing at his chest until he draws blood and his torn fingernails - bitten to the quick - scrape through bruise-mottled skin. Where is it?!
You tricked me, he howls to nobody at all. You promised me I would be strong enough to save myself, to save my family, but yet I couldn’t even save my heart!
(She watches through an endless succession of feverish, fitful nights, bearing witness to the ravings of a suffering madman.)
It is a different night, a different time. She stares at a scuffed door as a sharp, plaintive cry rises from someplace behind it, and then there’s silence.
She hears a low moan, and a voice, quavering and brimming with angry, bewildered confusion. Why? the voice cries brokenly, barely audible against a sickly-familiar, erraticly metronomic rhythm. Why?
Oh, Lauriam, your father sired such beautiful children. Although she is sure she imagines it, she reckons she can hear a soft sigh of regret, lost in the shuddering gasp of release. You look a lot like him. I didn’t want to let go of that.
(if she continues like this she’ll surely lose her mind the picture beneath her hands is distorted distorted and it doesn’t look the same she does not know what is happening but she is still compelled to draw and draw she does)
One evening she stands in front of the little cottage and peers inside. There is nobody there and it is empty, cold and unwelcoming even to look at.
Lauriam lies on the hard, cracked earth outside the door and stares blankly at the stormy sky, chewing on a blade of grass between his cracked lips. He is in the same place he was when she saw him and his sister talking about being princesses and knights, except he’s older now, twenty, perhaps, and the innocence has gone from his face. Once or twice, he reaches out to touch the scythe that lies next to him on the parched ground, and whispers to it occasionally, nodding sporadically all the while.
(theres an urgent chorus in her head which rises to a crescendo a screaming peak which grates in her skull and booms in her temples like a war drum its coming its coming this is the beginning of the end the end of the beginning theres no turning back no tomorrow no future)
There is blood on his hands, caked across his face; there is blood staining his bare, blistered feet, there are fingernail weals across his neck and arms. His breaths are a death-rattle, shuddering through his lungs.
(whats real and whats a dream what is a delusion and what is not she cannot tell and the memories which are not hers are raging in her head they wont go away)
They’re coming, Annisele, he says softly to the empty air, fingers tapping a staccato rhythm against the dulled metal blade. I can feel it in my bones.
(she understands now and she wants to run as far away as she can for fear of what he will to do her for stumbling across his past she understands now his capacity to maim to harm to injure to destroy to wreck to ruin to ravage to raze)
Some distance away from him, scanty grass grows over two freshly-dug mounds. Discoloured fingers peep from the clods of earth, shards of bone and slivers of faded cloth stand out bright and stark against the blackened soil. Overhead, an owl hoots sleepily, and Lauriam starts convulsively, flinching away from the sound.
(what is this fear she feels naminé does not know what to do she only draws but shes blinded to what she does and cannot see the figure which takes shape on the once-pure paper which sits upon her lap it is apprehension which crawls through her body like a thousand spiders scuttling through her brain and skittering along her nerves this dread is not natural just like the storm what is happening)
When the first inky tide of black surges across the barren fields, Lauriam sits up, pushing lank hair from his eyes. They’ve come for me, he remarks calmly, the old clarity returning to his voice. They’ve come for me at last, just like I’ve always expected.
(but most of all she understands he ruined himself his mind betrayed him he was betrayed by himself and nobody else he betrayed himself and that is where it all began the endless cycle of betrayal betrayal deceit and this is where it all started a betrayal of by the mind and by a nonexistent reality)
He grasps his blunted makeshift weapon, and moves smoothly into that battle-ready stance she knows all-too-well.
He’s almost recognisable now.
(she knows him she knows him knows him remembers him and then shes screaming screaming in her head because this is wrong all wrong and now she realises the truth dawns upon her like weak sunlight filtering through brooding clouds no no no she breathes but theres no turning back time theres no erasing it theres no changing it nothing nothing nothing nothing nothingnothingNOTHINGNOTHINGNOTHING)
I’ve been fighting a losing battle since the very first day, he rasps with a familiar chuckle. But I won’t stop until I’m one with the Darkness that ruled my heart. Accept me, or else nothing else will. Turn me away, but I will find you, and I will force you to welcome me into your abyssal bosom, for there is no place for me in this unreal wasteland of humanity.
For the briefest instant, his wiry, wasted muscles tense as his instincts override his willpower. But it is hopeless, and even he should know it, as he stands his ground against the jag-jawed Shadows which rake their claws across his skin; they barely flinch at the sweeping blows of his scythe, and even as she blinks it is knocked out of his grasp, to sink impotently into the dry earth, embedded deep into the arid soil.
When he is consumed by the shadows, there is no fear on his face. His laughter resounds in her skull long after she is wrenched away from the decrepit farm, and the memory of those dark-dark eyes blazing with that surreal euphoria is seared into her mind, mocking her as she is tossed through the maelstrom of remembrances.
She passes by several points of his life after he is accepted by the Darkness; she sees the emaciated once-peasant breaking into buildings and stealing books, sees him living half-wild in lonely forests as he slowly but doggedly teaches himself other languages, sweet and soft-sounding, until he can recite beautiful poetry which brings tears to her eyes. She sees a black-cloaked figure who offers salvation to the wary-eyed Lauriam, and then she sees countless nameless, faceless innocents fall beneath the sweep of an immense scythe.
She sees the handsome, smiling man - with his chiselled features and charming, courtly manners - woo swooning ladies from different worlds, only to slip deadly nightshade and monkshood into their drinks, then watching implacably as they die in his arms. She sees him bow to an empress, eyes glittering in the gloom of her bedchambers, only to reap her life with a single stroke of his great curved blade.
They all fall like marionettes with their strings cut, and through it all, his blank, hollow eyes - like the empty sockets of a mask - gaze dully at her, as though reproaching her for not saving from becoming who he did.
(With a jolt, she realises she has finished. Her masterpiece - if it can even be called that - is complete.)
She stares down at the thing she holds, charcoal-dark and heavy as lead in her hands. It is hideous, hideous, and her skin crawls just to look at it. Opposite her, Marluxia stirs, and he gazes across the expanse of white to meet her eyes.
He slowly pushes himself upright, and there’s no expression on his pale face as he draws in a deep, shuddering breath. She cringes as he rises to his feet and walks towards her with slow, deliberate steps, and turns away when he gently tugs the drawing from her hands to appraise it.
“Thank you,” he says at last, a quiet, humble expression of gratitude which takes her by surprise. This is the same mouth, she marvels, which speaks to her the sweet language of the high-born lords, but yet mere seconds ago was screaming curses with the rough tongue of a peasant. This same honeyed voice was only just raised in an exultant screech of deranged laughter, like the harsh cawing of a maniac crow, a discordant rancour which rings in her ears even as she trembles in the silence of Castle Oblivion.
“For what?” she breathes at last, appalled by the monstrosity she has managed to capture on the creased paper. She wonders what she has done, by taking this forbidden foray into his life, into his past; wonders what she has achieved from mapping out the links of his memories and actually holding them in her hands. They are depraved, wretchedly, abhorrently twisted, and she wants no part of it. She wants to burn them, burn them in the sweet flames of herb-fires, until there’s nothing left of them and Marluxia’s history is once more a blank slate, unknown and unspoken of.
But she can’t. They’re his to do whatever he sees fit to do with them.
As he walks away, he folds it the drawing up and pockets it, slipping it into the folds of his coat. “I wanted to forget,” he says with a ghost of a smile, bitter as bile. “And above all, I wanted to destroy everything that I once represented, obliterate every trace of what I once stood for. And with it, I wanted to erase Lauriam from all existence. However, for him to truly die, I had to invoke his memory.”
He pauses, and there is no mocking malice in his voice, only weariness which seeps into his words. “This is what happens when you resurrect ghosts of the past, Naminé,” he says with a hint of his old candour. “I hope you channel your power in ways that can be a boon to all, instead of a bane.”
There is no need for him to spell out the implication in his parting whisper, no need for him to remind her of what he is capable of. She nods, and already her mind is full of tormented images of white-white sleeping pods and blue eyes wide with misunderstanding.
back to index.
wordcount: 4637
rating: R
warnings: Implied sexual abuse, non-consensual sexual acts and incest.
synopsis - - - "Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty." -- The Picture Of Dorian Gray.
notes - - - Oh god. I don't know any more. All I knew was, I wanted to write something related to Dorian Gray, and. This. What. This is probably the most messed-up thing I've written to date. Evidently, it was inspired by Oscar Wilde's The Picture Of Dorian Gray, as well as the Oedipus Complex. Now, er, I left quite a bit out -- especially pertaining to Marluxia's life between his succumbing to the Darkness and being found by the Organisation. Buuuut, um, I plan on expanding on that later -- when I'm not too busy wondering just what in the blazes my mind cooks up. If I've said it once, I've said it before: Marluxia's creepy. He had to start somewhere. I think my twisted headcanon decided to assert itself. Woe betide. Related to In Memoriam. As for the drawing itself, I'll leave that up to your imaginations, haha.
It all starts innocently enough-or as innocently as anything associated with Marluxia can be.
“And how are you today, darling little honeysuckle?” he inquires sweetly, running cool, black-gloved fingertips along the line of her jaw as he speaks. “Will you sing for me, o beautiful oriole? Or would you try to stretch your pretty little wings and fly away from your cage?” At the final word, his fingers close warningly around the column of her throat and her breath hitches, a ragged gasp of fear escaping her lungs before she can stop it.
Mutely, she shakes her head, feeling the gentle pressure of his thumb lingering warningly over her windpipe; her voice seems to have deserted her, and she struggles not to look away as he tilts her chin up towards his face, tries not to flinch from his touch when he presses his lips chastely to her forehead.
“Has the sweet nightingale lost her voice? No? Then whyfore dost thou not speaketh?”
She hates it when he gets like this, when his voice takes on that dangerously silken edge and he lapses into the archaic language of his home-world. An irrelevant thought occurs to her, a tentative tendril of realisation which brushes against the fabric of her consciousness. He has a pleasant voice, Naminé thinks as she gazes into his cobalt-dark eyes, but the things which he says with it are another thing altogether.
“Is my very countenance so very frightful, ma petite cherie? Am I really that hideous to look upon, that you are struck dumb by the horror you are forced to behold? Is that it?”
Before she can respond, he crouches to meet her downcast eyes, his expression serious, sombre. His eyes are like the night sky, dark and unforthcoming, and for the first time, she is terrified of seeing herself reflected twofold in his impassive stare. “Does my face truly show the true extent of my deeds?”
“N-no,” she rasps out, and he smiles again, a frightening, raptorial grin which stretches from ear to ear.
“Good,” he purrs, as his fingers travel downwards, twining themselves in her hair. She tries not to jump when he leans close to her ear, his breath warm against her cheek. “I am glad, my blossom.”
She wonders what he will do to her today.
She steels herself for thorn-lined vines pricking against her skin, left tender and smarting from past incidents; she mentally prepares herself for the inevitabilities of his invasion of her body, resigns herself for what has now become a mundane, albeit perverse normality.
It does not come.
Instead of teeth nicking the back of her neck, instead of hands which close around her wrists and draw them away, he releases her from his embrace and walks away from her with slow, deliberate steps, towards the white-white table in the white-white room. She watches with glazed eyes as he picks up her sketchpad and drawing-tools, and sits opposite her in a stiff, high-backed chair, proffering her artisan implements to her with firm insistence.
Naminé fidgets uneasily in her seat; a low, warning hum of danger begins to throb at the base of her skull. “What are you doing?”
His expression is closed, unreadable. “Humour me, little orchid,” he says in a hushed whisper; he holds out her book to her until she takes it, and leans back in his seat with his arms crossed over his chest, a twisted grin playing along his lips.
“Now draw me,” he commands.
In the wake of his startling request, she can only stare at him, uncomprehending. “I…I beg your pardon?”
For the briefest instant, his mask of controlled satisfaction slips, and the barest hint of irritation flits across his features; he banishes them before she can open her mouth, and his face is expressionless once more, like the surface of an undisturbed midnight pool. “I wish for you to draw me.”
To hear him say such things unnerves her; she is prepared for physical pain and violation, but not this. “Why?” she grits out, lip curling as she glares at him. “Is this another one of your tricks?”
The words she spits at him are brimming with bewildered anger, searing her throat as she chokes them out. Marluxia shakes his head slowly, the arrogant smirk still stretched tautly across his face.
“Are you saying you want the other-?”
“No,” she replies coldly, ignoring the bite of her sketchpad’s spiral-wire spine digging into the palm of her hand. “Why should I draw you? Isn’t looking in the mirror enough for your narcissistic-”
His face is suddenly dark as thunder; he restrains himself with some effort, and only grins sourly at her. “I could - and should - break your pretty little neck for such impudence,” he comments candidly, and she gazes at him with murder in her eyes.
“You could,” she responds jerkily; even if she had the capacity to feel true fear, she is past caring by this point in time. “But you won’t. Y-you need me to make your plans fall neatly into place. Without me, you won’t…won’t be able to control Sora.”
“That much is true,” Marluxia comments idly, unblinking gaze boring into hers. “But that is currently irrelevant.” His eyes glitter with that cold, calculating intelligence she has come to loathe and abhor, and he leans forwards in his seat, resting his elbows on his knees. “I want to remember.”
In the face of such a cryptic statement, Naminé only stares stonily at him, but her mind is awhirl. She contemplates refusing, but the prospect of his hands on her makes her shudder; there is no choice-she has to submit to his will. “Very well,” she says at last, fingers curling so tightly around her pencil that the wood bows slightly beneath the pressure and her knuckles strain white and tense against her skin. “Very well.”
For several seconds, she sits stock-still, surveying the features of her tormenter; he seems almost harmless now, though she knows from bitter experience the speed at which his temperament can shift. She knows the swiftness with which he can move, how he can have the blade of his scythe arched behind her neck in an instant. Why? she whispers to herself as she flips open her book with a flick of stiff, clammy fingers. Why? she murmurs under her breath as she surveys Marluxia from beneath lowered lashes, unable to find any good reason behind his behaviour.
Through all of this, he bares his teeth at her in a mirthless smile. It reminds her of the pictures Demyx showed her, of the predatory grins of silent sharks right before they rip their prey to shreds.
She closes her eyes, and begins to draw.
She draws an oval for a head, sketches out rough lines which will form the framework of his body, seated in the white chair as though it is the bejewelled throne of a despot king. She adds in cursory marks, placeholders where his eyes and nose and mouth will be, scrawls out the shape of limbs and loose folds of black leather, and abandons herself to the familiar solidarity of knowing she is doing what she does best.
It is only once she begins to fills in his features in true that the memories start seeping into her mind.
She is in the midst of crosshatching the shell of an ear when the phantom recollection trickles into her with the stealth of a prowling panther, invading her consciousness before she even realises what it is. For an instant, she is frozen in place, muscles locking against her will at the sight of memories which are not hers, and then she sees the vague outline of two people, blurry silhouettes whose outlines remain stubbornly vague, as though perceived through spiderweb-cracked panes of frosted glass.
What is this? she tries to ask, but no sound comes out. What are you doing to me?
There is no response. When she forces her eyes open, she sees Marluxia slumped in his seat, eyes blank and glassy, lifeless as those of a slaughtered animal’s.
A chill ripples down her spine, an icicle of fear sliding between her shoulderblades. S-stop, she commands, but the voice in her head is tinny and timorous, faraway even to her own ears.
Even without realising it, she knows what is happening, in some detached and far-off portion of her mind.
When she closes her eyes, the stark halls of Castle Oblivion vanish from her sight, burned momentarily into the backs of her eyelids; she sees the blinding bleakness of white for a split second before it’s gone, all gone, and she’s standing in a darkened room illuminated only by the trembling light of a sputtering candle. The two figures are unfamiliar, nothing but strangers, but she receives a shock when she sets eyes upon the smaller of the two, a boy of no more than six years, gap-toothed and apple-cheeked, whose eyes skitter nervously to and fro.
Listen, Lauriam, a willowy girl says. The strawberry-blond boy is curled up on the bed with the threadbare sheets pulled up to his chin, chewing on his fingernails. When Naminé gazes into his face, she cannot suppress the frisson of surprise upon meeting his hauntingly familiar eyes, dark blue as chips of lapis lazuli. It’s all Hallow’s Eve tonight, and you know what that means. Scary stories! Which one-
The boy, this Lauriam, wriggles uncomfortably beneath his sheets and all but whimpers. No, he whispers, white-faced and trembling like a leaf in a gale as he pulls the covers up over his tousle-haired head. Please, you know I hate them.
Chicken, his sister says acidly, though her tone is laced with affection. Right, shove over. I’ll tell you the one about Old Man Hickory.
The boy blanches. Annisele-he snuffles, but she shushes him with a frown.
Listen, best beloved, she intones with a solemn voice, clasping her hands together as she sits straight-backed in the middle of his bed; the light of mischief glitters in her eyes, reflecting the merry dance of the candle-flame on his bedside table.
Only the upper half of his face is visible above his covers. He nods slowly, unblinkingly, and his white-knuckled grip slackens ever-so-slightly.
(She cannot stop drawing.)
Suddenly, she’s in a different time, a different place, outside the tiny little cottage she suspects is their home. They - the two children, who cannot be older than ten and twelve, and the phantom from a different time who watches them - are surrounded by fields of gold which sway in the sun. Naminé watches the scrawny boy lying on his back alongside his sister, the siblings staring up at the expanse of blue sky stretching above their heads.
D’you know what I wish for, sometimes? the girl says dreamily, a faraway look in her pale blue eyes; they’re the same colour as the cornflowers which dot the fields around them, as bright as the boy’s eyes are dark. I wish I could be a lady, or a princess, even. The boy next to her harrumphs loudly, but only Naminé hears what he says in a hushed undertone, whispered words meant for his ears alone.
I’ll be the black knight to your princess.
Did you say something?
Absently, he uproots tufts of grass and shreds them in his hands. Once he’s surrounded by the dregs of greenery, he digs his fingers into the loose, loamy soil and claws, unnoticed by his sister.
No, he says with a crescent-moon smile, an ironic curl of his lips not intended for her eyes. Must be a trick of the wind.
(She’s doodling idly at the hood-ties at his throat, and marvelling, with unseeing eyes, the way the silver catches the light.)
They’re a few years older now. She sees the two children - but they can’t be called children any more, not truly, not when Lauriam is taller than her, broad-shouldered but gaunt and dull-eyed - engaged in the midst of a passionate row, their faces tear-stained and disbelieving. The one called Annisele is thinner, more haggard, her pretty face prematurely lined with the weariness of an adult. What do you mean? she rasps, staring at her brother as though he is a stranger. A woman - presumably their mother - only cries harder into her threadbare handkerchief. The boy is whey-faced and hollow-eyed, his cheeks bloodless as he stares at his sister. The boy does not respond immediately, but his dirt-streaked face is downcast, his raggedly-cropped hair obscuring his features.
He’s dead, he says at last in a hoarse croak, fingers worrying restlessly at the hem of his scruffy shirt. Da’s dead.
You filthy little liar, the girl spits out, and then she seems to fold in upon herself; she cries and cries and cries, fragile shoulders hunched inwards as she hiccoughs into her hands. This can’t be true. It can’t.
Lauriam’s face is devoid of emotion. His voice is grey with weariness as he pulls at a thread on his fraying jerkin. I saw it with my own eyes when I went to bring Da his lunch. He saw them first, when they came a-running across the field, and he told me to run and not to stop. He pauses in his stilted narrative and glances down at the specks of red which fleck his clothes, and tries to fold the stained fabric unobtrusively out of sight.
Annisele’s eyes are wide as saucers. What happened? she whispers from between fingers splayed over her mouth.
Outlaws, he whispers, his face grim. A whole band of ‘em, led by someone they called the Assassin Princess. Th-they were on Da as fast as thinking. That ‘un outlaw - Faragond Lostface is his name, I think - knocked him down and this girl - can’t have been older than you or me - slit Da’s throat with her knife. He shivers despite himself. All mighty unnaturally sharp it was. They called her Lenera Lightningstrike.
Is Da-
They took everything valuable he had, Lauriam continues remorselessly, as, unnoticed by his mute audience, he begins to pick at crusts of drying blood caked beneath his torn fingernails. All his tools, everything. His good boots, his old signet ring…and all the money he had on him. The Lightningstrike girl, she seemed to know where he kept all his money. It’s almost as if someone told her. The whole thing-it’s as if someone set them up to it.
(Naminé can feel the unease which thickens the air she breathes, and it takes all her self-control to not choke on the sickly, cloying gasps she manages to draw in.)
She blinks, and the voices melt away. It is a little later now, a few days, perhaps, and an air of cloying despair descends over the tiny knot of mourners like a death-shroud.
It is a dreary, stom-ridden afternoon, pouring with rain. The damp earth squelches uncomfortably beneath the bereaved family’s feet as they stare mutely at the waterlogged trench before them, which fills with water from the rain sluicing into the ditch.
They have no choice but to bury what is left of their father on unconsecrated ground.
God have mercy on his soul, Annisele whispers, crossing herself; their mother wails and weeps with an animal unrestraint, and Lauriam’s grip tightens on the battered, rust-spotted scythe he used to dig the shallow grave.
His face is closed, unreadable, but a shadow stirs in his eyes.
As he tosses the first clod of earth into the pit, his sister begins to cry. How will we survive now?
(She is aware of the world dissolving around her again; she scribbles and scrawls with more urgency now, blindly drawing in eyes, lips, empty smiles. She cannot chronicle the beginning of his end quickly enough, cannot track the beginning of his downward spiral, for it happens too fast for her to track, and before she knows it the sketch beneath her hands is dark and smudged, and she realises with a start that she can’t recognise what she has inscribed upon the sheet.)
She stands by the bedside of the young man, who thrashes and sobs in his sleep. She is nothing but an artful voyeur, and even though she aches to tear her eyes away from the sight of the youth trussed up in worn sheets and whimpering like a small child, she cannot look away.
Save me, he chokes out, fingers grasping blindly at empty air. She aches to grasp them, to pull him from the clutches of his delusion; she wishes she can reshape the past, and not just the links which shape memories of it.
But that is not to be. She can only watch, powerless, frustrated, unable to alter the course of the histories she revisits.
You en’t from around these parts, sir, he murmurs during moments of lucidity. Are you the reaper, come for my soul? Are you here to pick my bones and guide me to Hell?
Woman in white, I see you, he raves, as he writhes as though possessed, back arching up from his battered mattress. Why won’t you save me? She skitters back from his bedside as though burned, and for a heartbeat his eyes are open, and he’s staring, staring at her.
My heart! he screams, once, fingers clawing at his chest until he draws blood and his torn fingernails - bitten to the quick - scrape through bruise-mottled skin. Where is it?!
You tricked me, he howls to nobody at all. You promised me I would be strong enough to save myself, to save my family, but yet I couldn’t even save my heart!
(She watches through an endless succession of feverish, fitful nights, bearing witness to the ravings of a suffering madman.)
It is a different night, a different time. She stares at a scuffed door as a sharp, plaintive cry rises from someplace behind it, and then there’s silence.
She hears a low moan, and a voice, quavering and brimming with angry, bewildered confusion. Why? the voice cries brokenly, barely audible against a sickly-familiar, erraticly metronomic rhythm. Why?
Oh, Lauriam, your father sired such beautiful children. Although she is sure she imagines it, she reckons she can hear a soft sigh of regret, lost in the shuddering gasp of release. You look a lot like him. I didn’t want to let go of that.
(if she continues like this she’ll surely lose her mind the picture beneath her hands is distorted distorted and it doesn’t look the same she does not know what is happening but she is still compelled to draw and draw she does)
One evening she stands in front of the little cottage and peers inside. There is nobody there and it is empty, cold and unwelcoming even to look at.
Lauriam lies on the hard, cracked earth outside the door and stares blankly at the stormy sky, chewing on a blade of grass between his cracked lips. He is in the same place he was when she saw him and his sister talking about being princesses and knights, except he’s older now, twenty, perhaps, and the innocence has gone from his face. Once or twice, he reaches out to touch the scythe that lies next to him on the parched ground, and whispers to it occasionally, nodding sporadically all the while.
(theres an urgent chorus in her head which rises to a crescendo a screaming peak which grates in her skull and booms in her temples like a war drum its coming its coming this is the beginning of the end the end of the beginning theres no turning back no tomorrow no future)
There is blood on his hands, caked across his face; there is blood staining his bare, blistered feet, there are fingernail weals across his neck and arms. His breaths are a death-rattle, shuddering through his lungs.
(whats real and whats a dream what is a delusion and what is not she cannot tell and the memories which are not hers are raging in her head they wont go away)
They’re coming, Annisele, he says softly to the empty air, fingers tapping a staccato rhythm against the dulled metal blade. I can feel it in my bones.
(she understands now and she wants to run as far away as she can for fear of what he will to do her for stumbling across his past she understands now his capacity to maim to harm to injure to destroy to wreck to ruin to ravage to raze)
Some distance away from him, scanty grass grows over two freshly-dug mounds. Discoloured fingers peep from the clods of earth, shards of bone and slivers of faded cloth stand out bright and stark against the blackened soil. Overhead, an owl hoots sleepily, and Lauriam starts convulsively, flinching away from the sound.
(what is this fear she feels naminé does not know what to do she only draws but shes blinded to what she does and cannot see the figure which takes shape on the once-pure paper which sits upon her lap it is apprehension which crawls through her body like a thousand spiders scuttling through her brain and skittering along her nerves this dread is not natural just like the storm what is happening)
When the first inky tide of black surges across the barren fields, Lauriam sits up, pushing lank hair from his eyes. They’ve come for me, he remarks calmly, the old clarity returning to his voice. They’ve come for me at last, just like I’ve always expected.
(but most of all she understands he ruined himself his mind betrayed him he was betrayed by himself and nobody else he betrayed himself and that is where it all began the endless cycle of betrayal betrayal deceit and this is where it all started a betrayal of by the mind and by a nonexistent reality)
He grasps his blunted makeshift weapon, and moves smoothly into that battle-ready stance she knows all-too-well.
He’s almost recognisable now.
(she knows him she knows him knows him remembers him and then shes screaming screaming in her head because this is wrong all wrong and now she realises the truth dawns upon her like weak sunlight filtering through brooding clouds no no no she breathes but theres no turning back time theres no erasing it theres no changing it nothing nothing nothing nothing nothingnothingNOTHINGNOTHINGNOTHING)
I’ve been fighting a losing battle since the very first day, he rasps with a familiar chuckle. But I won’t stop until I’m one with the Darkness that ruled my heart. Accept me, or else nothing else will. Turn me away, but I will find you, and I will force you to welcome me into your abyssal bosom, for there is no place for me in this unreal wasteland of humanity.
For the briefest instant, his wiry, wasted muscles tense as his instincts override his willpower. But it is hopeless, and even he should know it, as he stands his ground against the jag-jawed Shadows which rake their claws across his skin; they barely flinch at the sweeping blows of his scythe, and even as she blinks it is knocked out of his grasp, to sink impotently into the dry earth, embedded deep into the arid soil.
When he is consumed by the shadows, there is no fear on his face. His laughter resounds in her skull long after she is wrenched away from the decrepit farm, and the memory of those dark-dark eyes blazing with that surreal euphoria is seared into her mind, mocking her as she is tossed through the maelstrom of remembrances.
She passes by several points of his life after he is accepted by the Darkness; she sees the emaciated once-peasant breaking into buildings and stealing books, sees him living half-wild in lonely forests as he slowly but doggedly teaches himself other languages, sweet and soft-sounding, until he can recite beautiful poetry which brings tears to her eyes. She sees a black-cloaked figure who offers salvation to the wary-eyed Lauriam, and then she sees countless nameless, faceless innocents fall beneath the sweep of an immense scythe.
She sees the handsome, smiling man - with his chiselled features and charming, courtly manners - woo swooning ladies from different worlds, only to slip deadly nightshade and monkshood into their drinks, then watching implacably as they die in his arms. She sees him bow to an empress, eyes glittering in the gloom of her bedchambers, only to reap her life with a single stroke of his great curved blade.
They all fall like marionettes with their strings cut, and through it all, his blank, hollow eyes - like the empty sockets of a mask - gaze dully at her, as though reproaching her for not saving from becoming who he did.
(With a jolt, she realises she has finished. Her masterpiece - if it can even be called that - is complete.)
She stares down at the thing she holds, charcoal-dark and heavy as lead in her hands. It is hideous, hideous, and her skin crawls just to look at it. Opposite her, Marluxia stirs, and he gazes across the expanse of white to meet her eyes.
He slowly pushes himself upright, and there’s no expression on his pale face as he draws in a deep, shuddering breath. She cringes as he rises to his feet and walks towards her with slow, deliberate steps, and turns away when he gently tugs the drawing from her hands to appraise it.
“Thank you,” he says at last, a quiet, humble expression of gratitude which takes her by surprise. This is the same mouth, she marvels, which speaks to her the sweet language of the high-born lords, but yet mere seconds ago was screaming curses with the rough tongue of a peasant. This same honeyed voice was only just raised in an exultant screech of deranged laughter, like the harsh cawing of a maniac crow, a discordant rancour which rings in her ears even as she trembles in the silence of Castle Oblivion.
“For what?” she breathes at last, appalled by the monstrosity she has managed to capture on the creased paper. She wonders what she has done, by taking this forbidden foray into his life, into his past; wonders what she has achieved from mapping out the links of his memories and actually holding them in her hands. They are depraved, wretchedly, abhorrently twisted, and she wants no part of it. She wants to burn them, burn them in the sweet flames of herb-fires, until there’s nothing left of them and Marluxia’s history is once more a blank slate, unknown and unspoken of.
But she can’t. They’re his to do whatever he sees fit to do with them.
As he walks away, he folds it the drawing up and pockets it, slipping it into the folds of his coat. “I wanted to forget,” he says with a ghost of a smile, bitter as bile. “And above all, I wanted to destroy everything that I once represented, obliterate every trace of what I once stood for. And with it, I wanted to erase Lauriam from all existence. However, for him to truly die, I had to invoke his memory.”
He pauses, and there is no mocking malice in his voice, only weariness which seeps into his words. “This is what happens when you resurrect ghosts of the past, Naminé,” he says with a hint of his old candour. “I hope you channel your power in ways that can be a boon to all, instead of a bane.”
There is no need for him to spell out the implication in his parting whisper, no need for him to remind her of what he is capable of. She nods, and already her mind is full of tormented images of white-white sleeping pods and blue eyes wide with misunderstanding.
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