I do not own Kingdom Hearts or any related characters. This was written out of enjoyment of the series, and no profit is being made.
Claim: Luxord&Naminé
Rating: PG-13 for implied sexual abuse, mild language, and mentions of death
Notes: ...Alright, so this is my other One True Friendship. It's more of a filial relationship, so... yeah!
Pigeon
01
Number's I through III look at her with science eyes, all calculations and hypotheses. VII looks at her as though she is some rare species of animal he has never seen before. VIII is missing, assigned to distract a someone they call XIII while she moves in. IX smiles at her openly, even gives a shy wave, and she is vaguely comforted.
X, the man with the short blonde hair and the rings in his ears, tilts his head and observes. But he doesn't have science eyes. Something different moves behind his pupils. Eventually, he smiles too, though it's much a quieter one than IX's.
She remembers thinking if that meant something.
02
Twelve days follow where Naminé is introduced to each member in turn, one day at a time. On the tenth, there is a knock at the door.
She fumbles with the lock and opens the door. The man with earrings smiles down at her, quietly again, and comes in. He walks over to one of her windows and looks out as she closes the door again with a soft click.
He turns, his hands neatly folded behind his back (she is reminded a little of Number III). "My name is Luxord, Number X of the Organization. I can control the element of Time and use a deck of cards as my weapon."
He says all this much quicker and less precisely than the rest of them. She's expecting the question she's been asked nine times after those two fill-in-the-blanks sentences. "Do you have any questions about me?"
She shakes her head, just like she's done nine times before.
Then Number X starts talking precisely. "Good. Now, little lady, tell me the truth.
"Do you have any questions about the others?"
03
He finds he doesn't have much in common with others, except perhaps Xigbar, who suffers from the strange reality-twisting dreams that comes with being able to roll the dice of the universe. So when any new face comes along, he's ready to test it, to see if this recruit could answer the question he hasn't asked. Marluxia and Larxene seem far more interested in battle to pay his games much heed. Roxas is kept busy by being pitted against Heartless.
But little caged Naminé; she had nothing but time and a sketchpad in all her four-white-walls-world. And so, he had started the game, started asking his question.
It was when she picked up the cards and started playing back that he felt the answer resonate through him, like the bells in Notre Dame.
04
She's brilliant at Go Fish. She has an excellent memory.
05
For the first couple of weeks, she's almost insulted that he doesn't use his extended vocabulary with her. She's not a child, it won't kill her to learn new words, she reasons.
She realizes later that his words are like his cards: hiding places where he can sneak between the thinnest edges and floor-cracks of the world and just wander for a while.
But he doesn't hide in his big dictionary phrases with her. Once she figures it out, she's honoured. And wonders what exactly he's up to.
06
She likes the way he laughs from deep, deep down in his lungs. She jokes that he must've been an opera singer in his past life and he laughs again. He doesn't tell her that some nights he dreams of sea shanties and dance steps exchanged with a tiny girl on a wooden deck.
07
"You keep calling me 'pigeon'."
"Indeed, I do."
She taps her pencil against the table in thought. "I thought pigeons were ugly birds."
He smiles slightly from across the table. "They're certainly not the most aesthetically pleasing birds. But they are exceedingly tenacious little things."
She raises her eyebrows in curiosity.
"On some worlds, men use them to deliver messages in time of war. They're able to find their way back home across impossible distances. Some have finished missions where any man would have easily have given up.
"Besides," he continues playing his game of solitaire, "they're in the same family as doves. And you certainly have qualities of those birds, if it's any consolation."
08
The Gamblers start to trickle in during his visits. At first, just one trailed in a couple minutes after they had set up the board game. Then they started to come in twos and threes to play with the master and his little apprentice. One day Naminé looks up and notices for the first time they are using all the game pieces as Gambler #5 rolls a die. She looks to Luxord for an explanation. He smiles slightly and says, "They like you, Naminé."
09
The Gamblers like her so much they start to bring her little gifts back when they return from missions. They give her little chunks of metal and shiny dimes. They hold up keys to her earlobes as she looks in the mirror and laughs. But Luxord was the one who found her the crown in the ruins of Hollow Bastion.
That's how she started remembering. She's an exception again, remembering the things her Somebody didn't.
They don't tell Vexen.
10
The one thing he's always liked about her room is the smell. It is the pale smell of pastel shadows and fresh laundry, but if you stayed long enough, you could pick up the scent of stinging metal (Zexion can smell all of it for sure). It's from all the weapons she comes into such close contact with. She absorbs more of their edge, more of their bravery than she realizes.
So he's naturally concerned when he comes in and he can't smell the sting. Even her surface scent of white cotton is overpowered by the thick perfume of roses.
He feels fragments of panic surface when he scans the room and can't find her. He looks again, and sees her curled into her sheets, a fallen thing.
He crosses the room and stands over her bed, feeling time ache by. He touches her shoulder and she crumples in on herself.
She thinks he is someone else.
"Pidge."
She turns from the wall, hurrying to cling to him, trying to drown herself in the smell of seconds and plastic dice, but can't. She's crying and crying and can't stop. He sits on the bed and gathers her pieces into his arms.
11
He hates the smell of roses. Any flowers, really.
12
He can fall asleep absolutely anywhere. She knows because she once woke up in the middle of the night to find him snoring in a chair next to her bed, chin down on his chest. She woke him up and asked him what he was doing there. He chuckled and said he lost track of time, but she had a feeling he was lying. You can never tell with that poker face defence of his.
13
Demyx puts down his cards with an amused smile; Axel leaves the table; Xaldin watches her pull the chips in with furrowed eyebrows; Xigbar turns to him and says, "You've been teaching her poker, you sneaky British bastard."
14
One day he looks over her shoulder to find the white page full of sketched-line foundations. There are a lot of him. And Vexen. And Xigbar. And even some of Xaldin. But none of the others.
She turns and tilts her head up, smiling slightly. "Your hair tends to obey logic."
15
Once she's learned how to travel the Corridors of Darkness, she finally has someone to go to when the nightmares dig their sticky claws into her bed her at night.
She clutches her pillow as she tiptoes from the wall to his bed. The memory of fear that had clutched her in sleep fades slightly as she hears him snoring. "Luxord?" she pokes him in the shoulder. "Luxord?"
"Fehh..." He opens one eye wearily. "1856?"
"No, uh..." She hesitates. "Can I sleep in here tonight?"
"Hm. Naminé." He yawns and moves across the bed, leaving her empty sheets and blanket to curl up in. She climbs up and rests her head against the pillow. He turns, so she can feel his back behind hers. "'Night, pigeon."
He is asleep again in a wink, and says with a smile to his dream, "Hello, luv. Want to go time-travelling?"
She giggles into her pillow and replies, "Goodnight, Luxord."
16
Going to visit her after missions becomes second nature. One day he walked in the doorway, forgetting about the dark red caked to his forehead and flaked through his hair. Her eyes widened at the dried blood as soon as he had opened the door.
"Ah. Right," he had said, remembering. "I'll go take care of that."
"Please do," she had replied as he left.
17
"It's him I don't trust." Luxord crosses his arms, glancing at the door the Key of Destiny had left through.
"Just because he's friends with Axel and Demyx, you think he's not worth trusting?"
"Demyx, I can trust. Perhaps. If he didn't have such radical mood swings. And Axel is a man you can never trust."
"But he's Roxas! He's not Axel, he's not Demyx! Why is that so hard for you to understand?"
"It's not. It's just that he's exceedingly irritating, for one thing. With that attitude of his. If he doesn't smarten up-"
"That's your opinion...!" Naminé drifts off suddenly. A shy ghost of something comes into her face. "Do you see what you're doing?"
He narrows his eyes seriously.
"You're being protective of me." You're being... fatherly.
Luxord avoids eye contact and refuses to acknowledge the truth of this statement.
18
Sometimes he dreams that he's drowning. He falls backwards beneath the water, and anvils lie on his lungs. Far above, he hears a girl calling for someone else's name. He's never sure how to reply to his daughter's calls. He wants to say 'Naminé', but that's not quite right. The octopus-like Heartless are dragging him below anyway, so it's pointless to try.
19
She keeps all of their secrets. He keeps hers.
20
She came back.
One long year and several weeks after she left for Castle Oblivion, she came back. She came back with a boy (they split up, thank goodness), she's here to free the prisoner, but she came back. She stands there, suddenly a young woman who pleads with her eyes. Not you, Luxord. Not you. You're better than this.
He can't take it any more. He drops the poker face as though it never existed (but really, it never ever had). "Pidge," the word slips through smiling teeth.
She runs into his arms and he's alarmed that he doesn't need to bend his knees anymore. He stands back for a second and strokes the bangs that frame her face. "Though it seems you're more of a dove now, aren't you?"
She shakes her head, blinking wetly. "You look terrible."
"If I could, I would feel terrible too."
"What happened to you?"
He shakes his head, his eyes showing her the surface of some story he'd never tell her. "You came back home, pigeon. That's all I was waiting for. ...You're not crying, are you?"
She rubs an eye. "You know I am."
"Have you seen Roxas since you left?"
"Yes."
He smiles. "You'll be alright, then."
"Luxord..."
He pulls her into his arms and holds her. He's relieved to find all of her pieces are there (she didn't loose anything in the brambles of oblivion).
He knows that he can only hold on for one moment. Just one, because if you hold on to things for too long, the stream dams up and nothing moves at all. As Axel would've said, the show must go on. But no one ever says how long one moment has to be.
"Kairi is in the prison. You know how to get there, right?"
"Yes."
"Good girl." Quiet.
"Luxord?"
"Hmm?"
She shifts her cheek against the leather. "I missed you."
He thinks about this for far too long. "I missed you too, Naminé."
She feels a tremor pass through him. She leans back and looks into his face. His jaw is set as he stares into space. "Xigbar's moving. You have to go, now."
"But-"
"Goodbye, pidge."
She hears the portal before she sees it, and holds his gloved hand in a vice grip before he disappears. "I don't want to see you die."
She feels him kiss her on the forehead once, like a father she never had. "Then I promise you won't." The cold blossom of darkness swallows him up and takes him away.
She never sees him again.
pi-geon: 1.) any bird of the family Columbidae, having a compact body and short legs, esp. the larger species with square or rounded tails. Compare dove. 2.) a young, usually attractive, girl. 3.) a card, acquired in the draw, that greatly improves a hand or makes it a winner.