Room 515, Thursday Night

[dark_slippy_thing]

Naminé...

Valentine weaved his way through the hallways of the dorms, dragging his feet up the steps to the fifth floor. On the fifth floor, there was someone who he had made a promise to. He was going to keep that promise. It had been too long. An eternity. A moment.

Lost again, broken and weary
Unable to find my way
Tail in hand, dizzy and clearly
Unable to just let this go...

He was hearing whispering again. He did his best to ignore it as he stopped in front of the door to room 515, taking in a slow breath-- he had always taken breathing for granted before, he realized.

He wasn't ready for this.

I choose to live...

He wasn't ready for this!

I choose to live...

He had made a promise.

I choose to live...

He raised a hand and knocked on the door, staring at it uneasily.

(For Naminé.)

Comments

[palestshadow.livejournal.com]

Naminé was sitting on her bed, Alea purring calmly on her lap, when she heard the door knock.

I am surrendering to gravity and the unknown
Catch me, heal me, lift me back up to the sun

Odd, her music had turned itself off after she left the post office. It must be following whoever was outside her door.

She opened the door with a polite smile ... one that quickly dissolved into her staring open-mouthed at the figure in her doorway.

"Valentine," she breathed.

[dark_slippy_thing]

I choose to live...

"Naminé," he breathed in turn, turning the sheet of paper over in his hands anxiously. He was there. She was there. He'd kept his promise. He was tired and dazed and pretty certain that he had lost his mind somewhere along the way. But he was there.

He attempted to raise one hand to wave 'hello.' It was shaking.

I fell again, like a baby
Unable to stand on my own
Tail in hand, dizzy and clearly
Unable to just let this go

And that madness that was whispering through his head wasn't helping any.

[palestshadow.livejournal.com]

Calm these hands before they
Snare another pill, and

She reached out instinctively at that to clasp his shaking hand in hers, and tugged lightly on it to pull him forward into her room. He looked as though he needed to sit down before he fell over.

She noticed with shock that he was holding a piece of paper. One that had only left her sketchpad a few hours before.

"You got my drawing," she said. Because nothing else she wanted to say had words.

[dark_slippy_thing]

He half stepped, half stumbled into the room as she guided him in, his gaze drifting back and forth between their clasped hands and the sheet of paper.

I am surrendering to the gravity and the unknown

"It got me," he clarified, barely a murmur, "I think..."

[palestshadow.livejournal.com]

"I don't understand," she said softly, not able to let go just yet. "It hasn't had time to reach you."

Catch me, heal me, lift me back up to the sun
Help me survive the bottom

Her eyes were scanning over his face as if she was trying to memorize its features. "I thought something horrible might have happened to you," she said finally. "And I think maybe it has."

[dark_slippy_thing]

The edges of his lips quirked ever so slightly, uncertain themselves if they wanted to be smiling or frowning. Everything went unbearably silent for a moment as the song faded out entirely as though politely waiting for him to explain himself.

He swallowed.

"I waited too long," he said, his voice numb, still lost somewhere in a daze that refused to allow him to accept that he was actually standing here at all. Standing here would be too good to be true, wouldn't it? "It went black. It all went black."

Please release me...

"And then there was the page... The shore. Sandcastles."

He was looking down at the paper in his hands. The paper pulled him back, he was sure of it. If he was back at all, it was the paper that did it.

"I'm not real."

[palestshadow.livejournal.com]

"I thought that was my line," she said, her voice barely audible.

The music had shifted somewhere and there were bell tones and chords she couldn't place.

And if you're ever around
In the city or the suburbs, of this town

"You said to me that if I was standing here, that I was as real as anyone. Doesn't the same apply to you?" She reached up hesitantly with her left hand, letting it hover for a moment before placing it against his cheek. "You seem real to me."

Be sure to come around
I'll be wallowing in sorrow
Wearing a frown, like Pierrot the clown

Her hand brushed the edge of his mask and -- "The mask," she breathed. "I forgot, I'm sorry."

[dark_slippy_thing]

"Damn the mask," he whispered quickly, raising a hand to grasp at hers, afraid of losing this contact even for a moment, as though maybe if she were to let go, he'd fall back into that darkness with only the whispers left somewhere in the back of his head to taunt him.

Saw you crashing round the bay
Never seen you act so shallow
Or look so brown
Remember all the things you'd say
How your promises ran hollow

Taunt him. Blame him. "It was her dream. It was all her dream. The shadows and the world and me... I couldn't come. I didn't exist... I don't think. Not entirely."

[palestshadow.livejournal.com]

"Two years ago I didn't exist at all," she said softly, threading her fingers through his and inching closer.

Keep this scene inside your head
As the bruises turn to yellow
The swelling goes down

"If you're here, you exist. You're somewhere, not nowhere. I don't understand any of what you're saying, but you're here. Isn't that what matters?"

[dark_slippy_thing]

"I'm somewhere now, but I've been nowhere all along, like it all just stopped. The pages were torn off and thrown away and I was with them, and it stopped..." He closed his fingers around hers and leaned forward, closer to her, to this beautiful reality that had pulled him from a ruined dream.

When I dream, I dream your lips...

"It was all blackness and nothing, and now it's blue eyes and warm hands."

[palestshadow.livejournal.com]

"I couldn't reach you," she said, taking a nervous breath. "When you didn't come back, I thought maybe you ..." Changed your mind. Didn't mean anything you were promising. Didn't care. "... wouldn't come back, and then I started to think that maybe you couldn't. I could only portal to your room. So I tried to open a door."

She looked down at the sketch, and then back up at him again, and how did they get to be standing so close together?

"Were you stuck there? In darkness?" Odd that a portal couldn't reach.

When I dream, I dream your kiss ...

Her head felt strange and she didn't know if the music was helping or not.

[dark_slippy_thing]

Valentine wasn't entirely certain if their being so close was the reason that his lips were suddenly dry and his breath kept catching, or perhaps if instead the insanity was to blame. Whispering at him as it was, following him from the darkness and the nothingness to here...

When I dream, I dream your--

"It wasn't that I was stuck," he managed all at once. "I think it was that I wasn't at all. Or perhaps mostly. Possibly that I mostly wasn't and everything else wasn't at all and so there was me being mostly not at all among the nothing that wasn't really there to begin with?"

He bit his lip and reminded himself to breathe; something of a nervous inhale coupled with an absolute failure to remember to exhale again afterward.

"But now my mostly not has gone and turned into fully am and I think it's because you kept the mostly not from becoming not at all and then gave everything else a something to fill the nothing with?" It was entirely possible that that statement was the entirety of the forgotten breath.

A breath that, he realized, was quite close to her breath, as well.

[palestshadow.livejournal.com]

Naminé blinked a few times, trying to wrap her mind around what he was saying. "It's all right," she said softly, brushing her fingers over his cheek. "You're here now. You're real. I promise."

wearing a frown
like Pierrot the clown

Something was falling into place.

"Your world was destroyed, is that it? You mean that I didn't so much find you as ..." She looked at him carefully. "As recreate you?"

[dark_slippy_thing]

He hadn't wanted to be the one to say it. To just come right out and admit it. It was bad enough knowing it, but saying out loud that his world had collapsed into nothingness around him was too much to take.

like Pierrot the clown

Because it was his fault, wasn't it?

"...Yes. Most of me, I think," he mumbled, his breathy banter bubbling down into a complete failure to remind himself to breathe, now. "It was like something else kept me around, I think. Some piece of me that lingered behind and I was pulled back from there..."

He bit his tongue and mentally demanded that he cease his banter at once.

The fingers on his cheek certainly helped derail that train of thought some.

like Pierrot the clown

[palestshadow.livejournal.com]

The music flowed back into the other song again, wrapping itself around them as Naminé consider his words.

"The drawing, in your room," she said. "That's why the portal took me there. Unless ..."

I am surrendering to gravity and the unknown

She shook her head, trying to keep words from coming out. It didn't work. "Promises live in your heart. You made one to me. You couldn't go away, not while it stayed here. With ... with me."

Wait. In her heart? She had never been sure that she had one.

Catch me, heal me
Lift me back up to the sun

"You left something of yourself behind so you could come back. Promises keep themselves. I had to keep you safe until then."

Her fingers were trembling slightly.

I choose to live

[dark_slippy_thing]

Valentine still wasn't entirely certain that was how it worked, really, but he was standing here and she was here and despite the whispers that were singing around them both and threatening to swallow up his mind, he couldn't argue that this was all real enough, even if perhaps he wasn't.

I choose to live

There were fingers trembling against his face.

Everything was so close.

She was so close.

I choose to live

And though he had the notion that he could put distance between the two of them- he could go to his own room and his own bed and lay down and sleep and he would continue to exist now because she had somehow managed to bring him back-- he didn't have it in him to attempt that just get.

The whispers twisted and danced around them, swelling and devouring them like the tendrils of shadows that surprisingly weren't entirely unwelcome.

I choose to live

A drawing of a sandcastle at sunset fluttered to the floor as he opened his hand and put it against her back, pulling her closer.

"I made you a promise," he muttered, ignoring the lump in his throat and the shortness to his breath and the near-overwhelming need to just fall to the floor and break down entirely. "I had to keep it."

I choose to live

[palestshadow.livejournal.com]

Naminé's other hand was now on his shoulder, her breath catching as she looked up at him, except it wasn't really up, not when he was right here next to her

I am surrendering

her nose brushing against the edge of his mask

to gravity and the unknown

his hand still clasped over hers and she swallowed nervously

I choose to live

and closed her eyes.

[dark_slippy_thing]

He wasn't real. She wasn't real. They were both standing there, fingers twined together and they were holding one another closer and closer still and if the world were to crumple around him all over again this very moment, Valentine would be satisfied. This one moment was more real to him than even the darkness of an hour before had been. The warmth and her breath and the whispers around them and his knees wanting to fall out from underneath him and his hand on her back and her hand on his shoulder and their hands clasped beside their faces and he leaned closer and there were her lips.

This was what real was.

Real was falling in every direction at once.

Gravity.

Dizzy and clearly unable to
Just let this go

If this was all there ever was, he'd be satisfied that it had been worth keeping their promise.

[palestshadow.livejournal.com]

Naminé somehow hadn't quite believed any of this was happening, as if her mind was trying to protect her against a particularly vivid dream, until his lips pressed against hers.

She sighed, leaning forward almost eagerly.

I choose to live

Her fingers squeezed onto his lightly and her thoughts were flitting around crazily, he was real, he was back, he was kissing her, he was ... he was, and somehow she was responsible for it, and neither of them were real but both of them were and maybe existensialist queries were utterly beside the point when he was pulling her closer with one hand on her back and she was floating away.

I choose to live

[dark_slippy_thing]

Valentine hadn't been entirely all there when he had come back, really. But now that his mind was spinning even more and doing nothing all at once, it was evident that he was even less there and totally with it all at once. There were lips and there was kissing and she wasn't pulling away and he wasn't remembering to breathe but that was alright because there were lips and there was kissing.

And there was her.

And this was all right here and real around him and it was easy enough to ignore the fact that his lungs were screaming at him because they probably weren't even real anyhow and they were kissing. But eventually his lungs won the battle and he pulled backward only a bare inch, his lips still brushing against hers, and he breathed.

He really had taken breathing for granted.

I choose to live

He had taken a great deal of things for granted.

I choose to live

He didn't want to let go of her.

[palestshadow.livejournal.com]

Naminé's heart was pounding and she had to have one, she realized, that was what was spinning so fast and making her dizzy and

I choose to live

When he pulled away, she took a long gasping breath, shaking, lungs starved, and her thumb brushed lightly over their clasped fingers. She had never felt so scattered. Or so vibrant. Or so alive.

Alive. She was. How she got here didn't matter, any more than it did for him.

I choose to live

It had been two seconds and it had been entirely too long and impulsively she leaned forward to cover his lips with hers again.

[dark_slippy_thing]

Two seconds was entirely enough time to surface for air. And he didn't mind terribly that he hadn't had enough time to take in another breath for more. He'd just have to learn to hold it, that's all. It seemed like a very worthy cause. Breath-holding for kissing. He'd organize a fun-run for it later, perhaps. Right now? There was kissing, breath or none, and it was Naminé and it seemed perfect all at once and for a moment, the past few weeks melted away entirely and there was nothing but the now, her, and their lips and hands and bodies and warmth.

When this moment ended, it would all drift back again and the background music would be mad whispers and he wouldn't be entirely real and he'd blame himself for everything all over again.

I choose to live

But the moment wasn't over yet, and instead of whispers and dreams and guilt, there was just this dizzying notion that everything was, for once, absolutely perfect.

[palestshadow.livejournal.com]

Naminé only realized when she drew back again that the music had stopped, wondering why it had chosen that moment to retreat into the shadows again.

She stood for a long moment, forehead resting against his mask, trying to understand all of the emotions swirling around her at once, and finding nothing that made any sense.

Finally, flushing lightly, she disentangled herself from him, biting her lip. "It's good to have you back, then," she said softly, not quite meeting his eyes. "We were concerned. Have you spoken to your roommate? Do you know how long you were gone?"

She turned away to find her mask again. Possibly in more ways than one.

[dark_slippy_thing]

"I..." Valentine stared at the back of her head and tried to gather up his voice and his breath and his mind all at once, with very little success. "I came right here after the sun went down," he managed, pausing a moment more to piece together some semblance of a reply that didn't make him sound like he had completely lost his mind.

Even if he mostly had.

"I might have been gone forever. Or not so long as that, perhaps. I don't think there's any time when there's nothing at all. Time goes away with the rest of it and everything seems entirely too long..."

... Please turn around...

[palestshadow.livejournal.com]

Naminé placed the mask over her face, wondering if she should have warned him about it being a real mask and not the slip of paper she'd been using for that purpose; she'd purchased one while he was away, thinking it was some guarantee towards getting him back, but perhaps he'd think it odd that she suddenly changed her face right in front of him.

"There," she said, turning around with a nervous smile. "Now at least you'll be seeing someone with a complete face."

She had nearly said kissing. And yet it seemed as though all of that couldn't have happened, that a few moments ago she was in his arms and his lips had moved over hers.

"It's been nearly a month."

The silence was deafening.