[NON CHALLENGE]
Title: The Witch's Garden
Wordcount: 787 x_x yes i know, it's huge, but it's not long enough to qualify as a fic either so i figure this is the only place it belongs. plus it's not a challenge entry so i hope that's okay :)
Characters: Namine, Lexaeus, and vague allusions to a certain other character that shouldn't be too difficult to guess.
Notes: First post here, first time publicly posting anything I've written so any constructive criticism or comments are very very welcome. This was written months ago (away all summer, laptop died, only got the content from it back now), before Days came out so those of you who'll have played it will notice that it doesn't exactly add up with Days but hey, this is Square, there's nothing they love more to do than retcon! I don't even know what inspired this, any excuse not to study apparently.
She doesn't know what draws her to him in the first place. They hadn't even ever spoken before. He had accompanied her in the past, guiding her around the unfamiliar, ever shifting rooms inside the Castle as he led her to the other members' labs. But he'd never so much as said a word to her. No wonder Xemnas dubbed him The Silent Hero.
Yet still, she finds herself here again, lingering on the outskirts of the small garden he has crafted for himself outside. Maybe it's something about the way his giant hands - so big and strong they could undoubtedly break her neck with relative ease - gently caress each plant as lovingly as a father would hold a baby. Maybe it's because she so desperately needs a friend in this prison of a Castle and Lexaeus, despite his massive build, seems the least threatening of them all.
On the fourth day that she comes to the garden to watch him work, he addresses her for the first time ever.
"If you're going to stand there and watch all day, you might as well help,"
He doesn't even look up, merely holds out a small shovel towards her. Naminé nearly leaps back in fright, but tentatively approaches after several moments, her heart aflutter. She takes the shovel and kneels down in the soil beside him, uncaring for her white dress. She hasn't the first clue about gardening, nervously scanning the plants for some indication as to what she is supposed to do. But Lexaeus soon guides her hand, showing her how to scoop the soil away and carefully plant the seeds, how to spot any signs of pests, how to fertilize the soil...
She returns every day and Lexaeus continues to teach her. Soon enough she doesn’t even need his guidance, and together they work upon the little garden in a companionable silence.
After a fortnight, Lexaeus spoke again, but it was not about gardening.
“Back where we came from,” he begins, still not looking up from his work. Naminé, however, sits back on her heels regarding him. “There was a girl. Just slightly younger than you would be now. Long curly brown hair and the brightest green eyes I ever did see,” His lips twitch up, fighting a fond smile at the memory.
“Always dressed in pink with a ribbon in her hair. She used to like to watch me work too. I had a garden of my own in Radiant Garden too, you see.
“One day the girl asked me if she could help. So I gave her a shovel and she hunkered down and got to work. She didn’t need much guidance. The girl was a natural with plants and the earth.”
He pauses at that, tenderly examining the petals of a blooming strawberry plant.
“She came every day and worked on the garden from noon till nightfall, chattering away the whole time. The girl loved to talk. She told me all about herself: she had been born in the Garden but her parents had died when she was very young, and so she lived with a foster family instead. The Leonhearts, I think it was. Their son was her best friend. I asked her if she liked him and she threw a potato at me,”
He couldn’t resist a soft smile at that.
“I couldn’t figure out how she was so gifted with gardening. She could revive dying plants. Get flowers to bloom in winter. Fruits to ripen outside their season. I asked her and she just said she could understand the Earth. It dawned on me eventually the girl was a Healer,”
“A Healer?” Naminé asks softly.
“The opposite of a witch,”
Naminé wishes she hadn’t asked.
Lexaeus falls silent then. Naminé knows she shouldn’t ask anymore. But she does anyway.
“What happened to her?”
Lexaeus still won’t look at her. Instead, his hands close over the strawberry plant he was tending to. Those huge, monstrous hands that had lovingly tended to the soils and the plants and raised them as if they were his children. And he rips the plant from the ground.
“Radiant Garden was destroyed by the Heartless. No doubt she is dead like every one else.”
There is no emotion in his voice. Only the faint echo of what could have been bitterness - if only he had a heart.
Naminé does not return to the garden after that. Instead she weeps in her room. For the girl whose place she could not fill, for the shadow she could not fit, no matter how hard she tried.
There was no place in the world for a little witch. Not even in a world that never truly was.