The Old Mansion/Woods

[yuffie]

How much of a strain this picture could put on one's heart. Even to those that didn't have one. Perhaps he could play with this little witch more, she did seem to have some nice things about her that could perk his interest.

Slightly sadistic? Nay, terribly sadistic fit him more.

Smirking, he leaned closer to her. He kept his hand on her chin, his other clutching the picture by the edge, allowing it to be held safely, yet to still be firmly in his possession. Looking her in the eye, he talked, his breath wafting against her skin.

"Well, maybe I'll just rip it," he smiled. "Not like you'll miss it or anything."

His fingers slowly began to motion, tightening the middle of the picture, allowing him to tear through it in a matter of minutes.

[winterlovesong]

"...n-no!"

The protest was weak and strained. Naminé reached for the picture as that horrible Heartless ripped it right smack through the middle.

"How could you...?"

She stared at him, her light blue eyes shocked and unhappy...despite the rumors of Nobodies being unable to feel emotions.

Then she swallowed. This was no time to break down. She had to get away. Quickly, she took a step back, trying to get away from the Heartless. "Stay away from me," she said, trying to be bold, her voice quavering slightly however.

[yuffie]

If a picture were worth a thousand words, than Aros had to be the quickest speed reader the worlds had ever seen. He didn't even seen to care what it did to the girl if he had ripped it, all that he knew was that it was simply helping him to figure out the information that he wanted.

"Oh look, now you speak up," he grinned maliciously, taking two smaller steps forward to match with her one, some distance still between the two.

It was only a matter of time before the small mouse backed herself into a corner. The time it took to figure out all the answers was up to her. The faster it was the more pleased Aros was, although she didn't seem to see eye to eye with him on that little issue. She would answer him in time though, if she knew what was good for her.

"What's so important about that drawing, you have hundreds of them, so why so upset by me ripping one," he asked, taking another step, now he was looking closely at her, his breath lingering against her skin, his glowing eyes looking into her blue, timid and fear stricken ones.

It was quite fun to be an interrogator, at least in his case. He enjoyed watching people be broken apart piece by piece, until they were nothing but a small, defenseless being. Then again, he wouldn't want something like this done to him, heck, he wouldn't allow someone to do this to him, it would be unfair, unjust in his point of view.

"So, if you want to save your drawings you'll tell me who it is." He brought up a shard of the picture, holding it by her jawline, "And if you don't want him snapped in half like his picture."

Hunting someone by visuals alone was somewhat hard. Although, with the help of others he would be able to find him easily. Besides... he seemed familiar somehow, like a far off memory. Odd though, he'd never seen someone like him before, he'd remember someone looking like that. It didn't matter, a name would pop up soon, and with it, a meaning.

[winterlovesong]

Naminé was cornered, both literally and metaphorically.

For the literal instance, she had been backed into a corner. The Heartless was barely inches from her face. She could smell its not-so-pleasant breath, fanning across her cheekbones.

Metaphorically...the blonde could see no way out of this situation without giving the Heartless the information he wanted. Even then, it was still quite possible she could be harmed, but in this case, Roxas was more of her concern. Though, she knew full well that he could fend for himself and -- depressingly -- didn't remember the porcelain blonde girl in a little white dress that had once told him he wasn't supposed to exist.

Her blue gaze dropped, her eyes downcast. "He can take care of himself," she insisted, mimicking her thoughts, her voice hardly above a soft, frightened murmur. Her voice shook. She wanted to get out of here.

[yuffie]

This girl sure was persistant... in fact though, it was really starting to get on his nerves. Was it all that hard to just slip out an answer and be on her way? She obviously wasn't comfortable in the situation she'd wound up in, so why was she so set on trying to be strong. No point in fighting a battle that you've already lost.

"I'm sure you thought that about yourself," he tried to maintain his focus, no reason to snap at the moment. "and just look at where that got you. Helpless and hanging onto existance by a thread. Great way to take care of yourself."

So, this guy could hold his own? That was great, Aros could do the same. It was now just a manner of who could do it better. He was quite positive that it would be him. Although, given the time he was wasting on this girl, it would be a while before he could get out... she was taking more time than needed. It was only a matter of time before she snapped though, hopefully.

[winterlovesong]

Naminé swallowed unhappily. The Heartless was right, of course. She barely existed, sitting in this White Room, drawing pictures, meaningless. Even though she /wanted/ to be a separate entity, it was obvious the only time she ever had belonged was when she wasn't even herself at all, but when she was Kairi.

With that last depressing thought, Naminé made up her mind.

Careful not to look at the Heartless, keeping her gaze fixed on her shoes, she quietly, ashamedly admitted the truth.

"It's...he's Roxas."

Even though she was speaking it, she herself could hardly hear what she was saying, her reply was so inaudible. After all, Roxas could take care of himself. She felt like a little sneak for giving that away, but did she have a choice, really? She'd never been as strong-willed as Kairi.

[yuffie]

Heh, that was more like it. Seemed like this girl would actually prove to be useful, just needed to be patient with her it seemed. Like a little puppy, she needed to know she was beaten before she gave up that stray sock.

"Roxas, huh?" he fiddled with the ripped piece of paper with his fingers, investigating it ever so slightly. "Just how would you--"

"And Roxas-- I doubt you can hear me-- but... I am sorry."

"Why's everyone been calling me Roxas?"

"Roxas... I wish I could meet him, too."

The voices flashed through his mind, much like an unpreventable thought. He didn't know just who was speaking though, it was like a mystery he was being guided through with someone's hand close by. But why here, why now!?

He stalked away from Naminé, clutching the right side of his head. He hadn't been hit or anything like that, yet he felt pain, it was eating at him, almost like something inside of him was calling to that name, wanting to be freed and listened to. He'd had this happen before, in mild doses. his was like everything was hitting him at once, it was almost unbearable. He was strong like Heartless were but even the strongest ones would feel something from this overwhelming power.

What was causing it though? Ever since he remembered he didn't have these sort of jolts of memory, it'd only happened recently, ever since that trip to Radiant Garden...

...

That was it.

Shuffling around in his pockets he found that keychain. He ran his fingers along it, keeping it secluded inside of his pocket, safely hidden from the girl using the fabric. This thing was great and all, but it just caused so many troubles, and he supposed that it was just going to keep on doing so. Still, he couldn't bear to throw it out.

"So, what's so special with this kid?" he acted like none of the previous had happened, like he had merely shaken it off, even his hand was brought out from his pocket and held neatly in his crossed arms. Maybe he was trying to fool her... or maybe himself.

[winterlovesong]

The blonde's pale, porcelain brow furrowed some as the Heartless drew away from her, clutching his head like it'd been struck.

What had happened?

She thought back to the last few moments, even daring to inch slightly closer as she observed the subject in question, wondering what had made him react like that. All she'd said was that the picture was of Rox- ...as...

...oh.

OH.

If it were possible, Naminé's skin went paler, and she backed further into the corner, eyes wide.

But...h-how...?

She took a deep breath. The resemblance...it was /all there/. Impossible as it seemed, this Heartless was /Sora's/ Heartless.

So, did that mean she had the Heartless' memories within her somewhere...?

She didn't have long to ponder the thought before Sora's Heartless suddenly shook off whatever had happened to him and acted as though nothing had happened. At his question, the blonde's cheeks tinged a light pink - embarrassed and flustered.

"Nothing," she said too quickly, lowering her light blue gaze to the floor.

Lies.

[yuffie]

If satan were a snake, than Aros might as well have been growing scales and hissing. He was a demon, that others were sure of, he himself knew he was simply what he was, he was Aros, that was how it was going to stay for all time he hoped. Nothing more, nothing less, simply what he was.

Recently, he had becoming more and more of something, and that wasn't what he wanted, far from it. All these memories, these interferences, they were just distractions that he deemed unnecessary-- best off without-- meaningless items.

Naminé wasn't helping this any...

By the way she was reacting, the way she tipped off information. He supposed it was too late, she already seemed to have caught on, her facial expressions, her actions-- they were all delayed. Well, if one couldn't find a way to have their victim forget, the next solution was to distract them from the original problem.

"Nothing, huh?"

Slowly he made his way over to her, cupping a hand under her chin and raising her gaze to meet with his beaming yellow eyes. The heartless knew how to get what he wanted, and this was one little answer that he wasn't going to let slip away like a minnow. A small smirk appeared across his face, a white glimmer of a tooth appearing.

"Sure doesn't seem like that to me."

[winterlovesong]

Trapped. Cornered.

Yes, quite literally: /cornered/.

Naminé flinched visibly at the Heartless' - /Sora's/ Heartless' - touch. Again, he was touching her - what was it about him and physical contact? Perhaps he thought it intimidating.

Well, she wasn't one to be disagreeing with that statement.

She swallowed, mulling over the situation. She wasn't stupid, no siree, just a bit shy and timid and not the fighting type. She was a follower, not a leader. But surely, there had to be /something/ she could do here...

Inwardly, she investigated the thought that had aroused itself while pondering the huge "Sora's Heartless" theory. Did she have access to the Heartless' memories? Maybe not. Maybe so. It was the only weapon she could wield at the time - she had to try for it.

She paged through her mind, something akin to her paging through her sketchbook for an inside look on /Sora's/ mind, attempting to discover any hidden memory powers. But...this was taking too long, the Heartless would discover she was up to something. She had to keep him occupied.

Naminé thumped back to the present, and immediately felt the light flush on her cheeks and the adrenaline in her veins. She recalled exactly what fear felt like...though there was another question in itself, how was she feeling it at all? Perhaps it was just a memory.

"It is just nothing," she insisted, her voice just barely above a whisper.

[yuffie]

Oh how this could just have poetry weave out from this scene.

Her cheeks were red, she was embarrassed too
A crush named Roxas was coming into view
Some sentence that rhymes with view...

He wasn't much of a poet, but what'd it matter? The point was made.

Girls only reacted like that when they had something to hide, and if he really was nothing to her, she wouldn't be acting in this manner, it was just simple psychology coming into play here. After some brief thought, he rested on a final decision, school girl crush. She obviously couldn't feel an actual attraction... but maybe there was the old feeling-- or rather the memory-- of love, what it felt like, how one entered it.

Love, feh, it only ended in broken hearts and broken bones.

"Ah... he's your little crush, isn't he? That dirty little secret... Witchy, I'd think the Organization would've taught you a bit better than to mess around with someone," he moved his hand away, though continuing eye-contact with her. "But don't worry, my lips are sealed. This Roxas has gotta have some past with you... is there something I don't know?"

[winterlovesong]

For some reason, it wasn't that difficult for her to finally have her little "crush" revealed.

After all...maybe he wasn't a crush at all. She didn't really feel for him /that/ much, only as much as she had felt for Sora in Castle Oblivion, when he was her hero and she had pretended Kairi didn't exist. And even then, was her attraction anything more than...a memory? Anything more than what it absolutely had to be, being in essence she was Kairi and Roxas was Sora? Oh, they were friends, of course, she'd helped him out in that digitalized Twilight Town. But...did she really honestly /like/ him like that? More importantly, /could/ she like someone like that? Was it only because of the bond between Sora and Kairi that semi-existed in their Nobodies?

Whatever the case was, having her little "crush" revealed almost made Naminé sigh in relief.

Of course, if the Organization found out about how she felt, surely they'd use that to their advantage and her disadvantage. Or maybe they already knew, or had caught on somewhat - it probably wasn't that much of a secret that she had helped Roxas, they were bound to find out, and they weren't stupid - they could look at the connection between Sora and Kairi and muse the same for the two of them. But then, they might be conceited about Nobody views, how they're not supposed to feel anything, even though she and Roxas might be "special" Nobobdies...

Naminé swallowed slightly, coming back to the present. Anything the Heartless didn't know...she highly, /highly/ doubted that. "You probably know more than I do," she murmured aloud.

Then she realized what she said.

She had just about completely given away she knew that this Heartless was Sora's Heartless. (Though, he might already know that she knew...) She bit her lip and averted her gaze to the floor again, fully aware she'd given away something.

How was the Heartless going to take that?

[yuffie]

Know more about this kid? Hah, fat chance, Aros wouldn't bother wasting his time on someone like that... come on, the guy had 'prep' written all over him! But... why would she just so simply assume that he knew about him? There had to be a catch, something going on in the background that he didn't know about.

If this was funny, he sure wasn't laughing.

Aros knew little about himself already, adding this into the mix was only managing to confuse him more and doubt whatever he had learned thus far. Roxas... Aros... the two just didn't seem to fit together! How could anyone come up with that conclusion off a first name basis? The heartless had heard of her before, overhearing certain conversations that he might've just happened to have overheard, but from what he knew, he was just a brand new face to her.

What was going on? It didn't make sense anymore... it felt as though he was slipping... slipping into the vaults of insanity. What was what anymore? He sure didn't know... Aros had all but forgotten about the world outside, the plan. It was her and him now... white walls surrounding them, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. He had to face his past, what she knew about him that he just seemed to have forgotten. The acid of insanity, so sweet at first, only to lash back in a given time, wicked as ever.

"I would, huh?" he growled silently, growing more and more irritated with the conversation. "Then just spit it out. Why?"

Spiraling downward he was...

Down...

Down.

Drowning in his own beliefs, what he had once thought was right, what he had trusted and held close. Naminé had managed to rob him of that, and for that, there should've been consequences. Where was the surface? There didn't seem to be one... no safe-zone from the, now appearing, lies that had weaved together his life. His lungs felt heavy, no air... suffocation soon setting in to the sanity. No line to throw to him... he was all but dead to the world and to himself...

Man overboard.

[winterlovesong]

Something was going on, something stirring within the darkness in front of her.

Naminé stared at those yellow eyes, those orbs that had seemed so blank before, blank and lifeless, a cage to get trapped in. But she realized she was wrong...they weren't just yellow circles where real eyes should be, they were endless depths of the light lost for a heartless, a representation of what /should/ be there, and what wasn't. They were a violent storm, everything locked away... As there was no heart for a heartless to store everything, the eyes told all. And maybe they did have no emotions. But Naminé felt herself sucked into their depths, as though she were being tugged into a deep forest where she may never get out again...

And dark it was. One might even go far as to say pitch dark.

She realized she had said something very wrong, something that had caused the Heartless to slip a bit. He doesn't know, she thought, feeling numb with surprise. He doesn't realize the connection he holds with Sora and Roxas...

And I may have just ruined all of that.

There was no more reason to beat around the bush. This Heartless was crazy. Unstable. Naminé sucked in a breath.

"You should know, after all...you're...you're Roxas' Heartless, just as he is your Nobody...and the Keyblader Sora is your Somebody."

There. It was said.

She awaited the consequences.

[yuffie]

((Sorry, major post... needed to find a way to go about it ><))

Sora... Roxas... new names? Not in particular... they were nothing to him, just pointless letters jumbled together to create a 'name', that name meant nothing to him... nothing! Whatever they said was true, he didn't need to believe it, he refused to... he was what he was, not what someone else wanted him to be, what he is and was expected to be! Aros was his own being, no one else's, a shadow with no owner, his own entity, ruler of his destiny. Now that these names were out and about... was something that was once his going to be taken from him? No, he wouldn't let it.

Heartless, nobody... Aros knew well how they worked, he knew that it meant that he was the same part of someone else, the original being destroyed after the separation process; two halves of a whole. He... he didn't want to be a part of someone, equal to another, he wanted to be his own embodiment, have his own life be his own from now and from then on.

He looked to the picture once again, apart and in shambles from earlier actions. That blond kid, Roxas... he was a part of Aros? Aros was a part of him? It just seemed too impossible and too complicated to grasp at the moment. Aros had lived his life knowing that he was the individual he sought after, his decisions made him what and who he was. Now that he knew this, he wasn't sure what to believe any more. It wasn't his decision to be a Heartless, that was someone else's... Had they made that decision for him? Destined him to be forever more shadowed in the darkness that was a part of him... made him what he was?

Too many questions were being thought of and not voiced... there were definite problems. How could he say what it was he was thinking though? How could he? Was it even possible? It seemed that with time, more and more questions arose from the graves of other questions that he thought he knew the answer to-- that he had put to rest.

No...

He wasn't going to give up on what he was, he would survive, the others wouldn't. He was the alpha-male... anyone who wanted to tell him otherwise was wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong! He was what he said he was and that was the way it would stay, Roxas was out there, that he knew... Sora... well, normally they wouldn't be... but Witchy there said 'is', not was... going on that hunch, he was still out there... he was the head of the problem. If Aros knew one thing... killing the head of the snake usually made the rest of it die along with it. All this doubt, all this confusion, if something were to happen, were he to find that keyblader... everything would be fixed. This pain he felt? Gone. The confusion? No more. The pain of something that would be there were he anything more than just a Heartless? Obliterated.

So now he had a plan... an idea... he would have it work out over time. For now though...

"Don't... I am what I say I am," he shot his head her direction, scowling. "He might be connected, but he's not me... I'm not him... them."

He closed his eyes, letting his senses go and linger as they felt it be, try to see the point of view from someone that was still him, but wasn't at the same time.

A breeze, salty taste, the feeling of warm sand... it seemed like a home, it was refreshing... nice in a-- no, it wasn't Aros' home... it was Sora's... that was something he'd never get to experience.

Right now though, there was the need to leave, he'd done enough to torment the Witch, anything else that he was wanting to be doing would just be over-kill to the original plan he had sought out through coming here. Already was he getting more on his plate than he thought he'd leave with... there wasn't a need for seconds.

"Anything else ya wanna tell me Witchy," he spat out the word. "before I leave you alone? I know you've been just dying to see me leave!"

Aggravated? That was an understatement... but he had a damned good reason to be.