As an idle note, this is actually beta-fic-- that is, the first incarnation of an idea I'm going to rewrite into a bigger story. So if you see me post something dubiously similar to this (down to individual lines) in the future, that's because it's the story that this was the predecessor to. ;)
Any and all similarities to Luc Court's Scheherazade (which is a wonderful fic in its own right) are incidental, since I've consciously tried to avoid them. Really, it's his fault I'm writing KH2 stories at all.
Bacchus is Cheap
Another story with a title that has nothing to do with the content by Mana Angel
Namine doesn't remember who her Other is. As a matter of fact, she doesn't remember much of anything at all, and it makes her younger than the other members of the Organization in more ways than one. Her timidity and naivete grate on Larxene, who sneers and says that whatever strength of will it was that kept her from slipping into a Dusk probably gave up in disgust halfway, leaving the yellowbellied creature it produced with a mind as blank as a fresh sheet of paper.
At the time, Namine thinks that being blank isn't so bad. Something that's already been written on, after all, isn't as nice to draw on top of: Namine, of all people, should know.
Remembering nothing may be better than having secrets that can be pried out piece by painstaking piece, but it doesn't mean that there's nothing that the Organization can learn from studying her. It's a task they apply themselves to with more than a little enthusiasm, and during her first weeks in the Castle That Never Was, Namine quickly discovers that moments of quiet contemplation come few and far between. The sensations of being prodded, interrogated, and made to leap through hoops like an absurd circus animal combine to form nearly all of her earliest memories, and they chase her into her dreams.
Even later, Namine finds it difficult to sleep without recalling the skin-prickling feel of intent gazes assessing, marking, and weighing her every move against a mental litmus test only they know the purpose of.
Vexen and Zexion might be the most thorough with their investigations from a scientific point of view, but the other members of the Organization have their own ideas about what constitutes valid research. Inevitably, they seek her out to satisfy their curiosity, and Namine has little opportunity for rest when every turn yields another pair of dangerously inquisitive eyes glinting at her from the darkness.
After a time, she comes to learn when and what she can expect of them, and reacts accordingly. Vexen prefers the certainty of controlled experiments and wires that measure her breath and sweat and pulse, and is actually fairly kind, so long as she cooperates. On the other hand, Xigbar seems to delight in coming up with assorted and often heart-stopping methods of pushing her sluggish reflexes to snap into action, searching for power that isn't there. It's almost a relief when Demyx does nothing more than her to try playing his sitar, then to dance to it; when that fails spectacularly, he introduces her to pen and paper instead. Amused by how quickly she takes to the task, (like a duck to water) he promises to provide her with more.
Luxord accosts her for impromptu games of poker and dice, and is oddly pleased whenever she manages to catch him cheat-- she loses most of the time anyway, but the only stakes they play for are chores and stories, so she doesn't mind. Saix doesn't tell her anything at all, but she knows that he watches. Namine finds herself unconsciously keeping her movements measured and wary when he's in the vicinity, like a mouse creeping past a sleeping beast. Xaldin taught her that, strangely enough. She may not be able to control the wind, but she has learnt to feel it on her skin, the shift in air pressure when someone moves towards her.
Xaldin had said something about forewarned being forearmed, but Namine suddenly wonders if she isn't the only one Xigbar's snuck up on to prank in the past.
Marluxia's greenhouse is tolerable enough when he brings her there for the occasional afternoon tea party (she suspects its because she's the only one he can bully into it without fear of damage to his plants) but the air is sweltering, and her nostrils choke with the overwhelming scent of a hundred kinds of flora nurtured in such a close space. Namine dislikes it when Zexion and Lexaeus keep her mind occupied with equations and wooden puzzles and half-formed questions, since solving them takes up so much of the time she'd prefer to spend drawing, but she dislikes Larxene's interrogations most of all.
Larxene isn't interested in questions: just in how much she can make Namine scream.
Not all such impromptu meetings are as unpleasant, or require anything of her-- the one and only time that the man Namine comes to know as the Superior speaks to her without the pomp and ceremony of his station, it is to gravely offer her a candied apple in one of the castle's back hallways. Namine hesitates (visions of children turned to fine pork roasts and wolves baking baby pies dance across her eyes like spots of light) before she accepts it, and his expression shifts into something that could be a smile, if it didn't have so many teeth in it.
It's only when she's fled down the corridor that the possibility of poison occurs to her, and though she can't conceive of a logical reason for him to want to kill her (curiosity is reason enough, in the absence of malice) Namine leaves the candy untouched on her desk. For all she knows, it's still rotting there, sugar-saturated fruit wrapped in a paper-thin promise.
Still, Namine avoids their questioning when she can. Predictably enough, doing so only succeeds in making her ankles sore and her breath turn harsh, and no matter how extended the detour or the pains she takes to evade them, she never fails to find a black-coated figure patiently waiting at the end of her path.
(Oddly enough, she's never met Axel.)
The castle is big, Namine realizes, but not that big, and for those who can step into one shadow and out another without any more effort than it takes to breathe, the walls might as well not exist. Try though she might (it's the first thing Vexen prompts her to attempt) Namine cannot master the particular trick to the slip-and-slide through space she's watched them perform what must be hundred of times now. It makes something broil in her stomach, something that tastes of acid and bile, but Vexen tells her it's nothing of concern and brushes it off, patting her head absently with one hand and briskly making a note on one of the clipboards perched around his laboratory with the other.
Just when she's given up any hope of even attempting to avoid them all, suddenly, the sessions stop. For one glorious day Namine is left completely to her own devices, and for the first time she can walk down a hall without interruption and linger on balcony edges without worrying that someone will literally appear out of Nowhere and attempt to tip her over. Even if she can only peer out over the lifeless rooftops instead of walking along the streets, she's free.
And then she turns a corner and catches a brief impression of unnaturally crimson hair and wide green eyes before her face plows straight into someone's chest.
Namine does not know what frustration is, but she suspects she's feeling (or thinking) something very much like it.
Deleted lines, for those who like reading that sort of thing. '...quiet for herself-- between Zexion's quiet, terse interrogations and Xigbar's more enthusiastic attempts to discover her hidden talents (after she accidentally shoots a gargoyle crenellation off the roof, nearly clipping Vexen's head off in the resultant avalanche of concrete, that idea is quickly aborted) and everything else, she's unsurprisingly overwhelmed by being the focus of attention.'
'...with the other. Namine has learnt that, officious as they may look, none of the clipboards are devoted to any one thing: the main purpose of having so many around the room is so that Vexen can as many notes as he needs while moving as little distance from his subject as possible.' (But in reality, Vexen was really just a lazy ass, and if Axel hadn't offed him with such great impunity, he would've lived to a ripe old age and then died gruesomely from eating one too many cream puffs while working on experiments at the same time. I mean, er.)
'... provide her with more. Every time she meets him after that, all he does is provide her with a fresh sketchbook and a box of crayons and a wink; sometimes he asks to see her drawings, but most of the time he simply pats her on the head and goes on his way. When Namine shows him the crude picture she's drawn of him (it's awful, she knows it is) Demyx actually flashes her a smile and takes it almost reverently from her hands.'
Although I liked this a lot, I thought it placed undue weight on Demyx's presence. :P I dunno, I might put it in the final version.
Trivia: the title is the name of a dungeon room in the Squaresoft PSX game, Vagrant Story-- a complete list of the room names (some of them make great titles) can be found on the bishink site.