Disclaimer: Memorably not mine.

A/N: Written for KH Drabble Challenge #217 – 'Letting Go'.

Walking Through an Unopened Door

© Scribbler, February 2010.

Footfalls echo in the memory,
Down the passage which we did not take,
Towards the door we never opened.
~ T.S. Eliot

Manipulating memories is like using nets for catching fish. The nature of each kind determines what you weave your net from – harsh memories need steel cables for strength, happy memories can be caught with plaited silk, memories of adventures need sticky threads like flypaper to keep them from flying away, while quiet moments only require twisted tissue paper.

You throw your net out repeatedly, hoping you've chosen the right material. It's part luck and part skill – more one than the other as time progresses. When you get it right, you celebrate. You peruse. You learn. You enjoy what you've caught. When you misjudge, the memories thrash free, leaving your net in tatters. Those times you don't curse or throw a tantrum. You don't go all out to catch what got away so you can torture it for defying your powers, like Larxene. You don't bat it about speculatively, wearing a strange not-happy grin, like Axel. You don't hold the memories you already captured close and stroke them with unnerving softness, like Marluxia. You certainly don't cut them open to see what makes them tick, like Vexen. You just sigh and start over, weaving another net and another hope that this time you'll get it right.

You do it continually: catching, cataloguing, storing. You think maybe you're looking for something, but you're not sure what. Maybe it's one of those 'you won't know until you find it' situations, but until then your routine satisfies you. Your fingers become deft. It takes less time to weave and cast each net. Your arms strengthen. You can draw back more memories from greater depths – places untouched for years.

Eventually you reach deep enough that the memories themselves are fuzzy. You turn them over in your hands, smelling warm milk and some powder that tickles your nose until you sneeze. You hear the rumble of a woman's voice and feel her heartbeat against the side of your head, even though you're standing in the middle of a white chamber, not snuggled into a giant armpit. The memory doesn't come with words, but you know the right one: Mother.

You have no mother. Nobodies are made, not born. You can't miss what you've never had. You, especially. The others miss their hearts because they know they once had them, right up until they changed. Their mothers belonged to their old lives, when they were different people, and stayed on that side of the divide, while their hearts straddled the gap, leaving tantalising residue on their minds and ribcages.

Nevertheless, your chest aches and your eyes sting. When you're found crouched on the floor you say you have a stomach-ache, and get sent to bed with a mouthful of horrid-tasting cod liver oil. In bed, you take the memory out and examine it again, in private, and cry for the first time ever.

When the day comes for you to stop making nets, your fingers tremble, hooked into the ones you spent so long constructing. Memories pulse and rub against you like trapped animals. You wonder whether it was all worth it, until the moment of decision comes, and you realise yes! So you rip away all your nets – you bend the steel and cut the silk, slick down the stickiness and tear the tissue paper. You set all the memories free and jump in to guide them home.

I kept them safe, you saythinkfeel as you finally blend with their source. The memories sing around you, flying away in great shoals to where they're supposed to be now the danger is over. You brought them back together when they were flown apart. I kept them safe for you.

You let go at last, and someone else's net surrounds you like weaved strands of light.

Fin.