Finale, Part 1: Destiny Islands, Brighton, the City of Light, on a Thursday Afternoon
It was a day like any other day. It could have been any day.
Naminé had taken Kairi's hand, and then Naminé was Kairi, and they were whole again.
Time fell into a strange sort of crawl. She was with Kairi, hiding around her subconscious and playing around the edges.
Sometimes Kairi sketched, and sometimes, Kairi sat back and let her sketch. It wasn't the same, but it was still nice feeling the sharp curve of pencil on paper. So long as she was careful, and never drew the things she was keeping to herself.
Kairi loved to hear Naminé talk about Fandom. She'd never been adventuring the way Riku and Sora had, hadn't seen nearly as many strange worlds and unusual places.
Naminé spoke of a weekend where everyone was a child, and another when everyone had amnesia, and Kairi laughed and begged for more. Sometimes Naminé could step out, shadowy and ghost-like; more often, they would speak in turn.
Tidus and Wakka thought she was very strange when they found her on the beach, laughing and chattering to herself. She didn't pay it much mind.
Kairi was the sun, and Naminé the moon hiding just out of sight. It was better to be part of the sun than to be a lonely moon. Everyone said so. Moons didn't have their own light, they could only reflect light back from somewhere else. She could only ever be an echo, by herself.
So she locked those feelings up tighter and made sure Kairi wouldn't know, when she crept to her own corner. Kairi only knew that she woke up with wet eyes and a lingering ache.
So Naminé told Kairi most of it -- adventures and dramas and high comedy. She left pieces out. Sora being there, that would only confuse Kairi, and Roxas, that might seem maudlin. She told of little sibs and Snowmonsters, but other things were her own. Alea. And a very important man. Those she hid away, in the corner she kept for herself.
It was a day like any other day. It could have been any day, but it wasn't.
Kairi walked down to the beach and sat cross-legged, playing idly with the sand.
"Naminé?" she said. "I want to know the rest of it. If you'll tell me. I think I need to know."
Maybe that was why it was so strange, why they weren't Kairi-yet-Naminé altogether just yet.
But it's mine, Naminé thought. Stupid. Selfish. There was no Naminé left. Foolish to cling to the embers and pretend there was meaning there.
"There was ... a boy," Naminé said, and every word hurt.
Kairi waited, patiently. Nearly taking it all back. You don't have to tell me.
She did. It was the only way to sort things out for good.
Naminé searched for words. "He had a mask. He was a juggler. He was mine, not some heart I stole from you. I pulled him from a void and he gave me his heart, to keep close to my own. His eyes were pinholes and his lips were perfectly kissable and he was mine."
"He sounds wonderful," Kairi said, smiling a little. "What happened?"
"You did," Naminé said, only hoping it didn't sound as bitter as it felt.
Kairi could have kicked herself. Of course, what had she expected?
"Naminé, I'm so sorry," she said.
"It's all right," Naminé said, as dismissively as she could manage. "I knew all along. I told him, as well. I had my own time, for a time, and now I'm yours again."
Kairi was only half-listening. He'd given Naminé his heart, to keep safe with her own. Naminé had her own heart. Of course. But Kairi had always had her own. Did they have two hearts? No wonder it seemed so crowded in here. She focused, carefully, and looked. Not with her eyes, but with her heart. It was much easier to see that way.
"Tell me his name?" she asked. So she could know which strands were his. So she could line the pieces up. So she could put a name on the face which kept showing up in her dreams, and she'd blamed on too much pizza right before bedtime.
Naminé would have winced, had she been able. His name. It would be turning over every last bit of herself. It would mean letting go entirely.
She couldn't. She couldn't possibly. She couldn't surrender herself like that.
But they couldn't go on like this, her hiding in corners and stuffing away her pains and fears and aches. Kairi deserved to know all of it, if they were one again. And there would be something strangely validating, oddly real about speaking his name with Kairi's lips. He was, and she had been, and they had loved, and it was real.
Helena re-read the letter for what must have been the hundredth time that morning. It was written in a familiar scrawl that she'd never seen before, far more desperate than she'd ever imagined his words to be.
It might be my only hope of ever being whole again.
She set the letter down, and she mused on it, quietly glancing out the window of her Aunt Nan's flat. The circus hadn't been taken off the road this time, they'd simply made a detour away to Brighton, because the doctors wanted to poke at Mum's head to be certain that everything would be fine. It was, it was always fine, now, but routine was routine, and Helena knew better than to think that the routine would ever strip away the worry.
His only hope?
His only hope, using that mask, might take him elsewhere, might take her juggling partner away as well. She'd often told Jason of another world, in musing, in stories that he laughed at while she drew, and then insisted that he'd want such a place to be real, if only because it meant more excitement than even the circus could offer him.
She re-read the letter. A hundred and one times to be sure.
And then, she picked up her charcoals.
The MirrorMask, after all, gave people what they needed. And, she'd learned, it seemed to work both ways. If Jason was meant to be Valentine, and if Valentine was meant to be Jason, or if nothing would happen at all- the Mask would sort it all out, wouldn't it?
It always did.
The white room. Not The White Room, that had been Naminé's. This one was simply a room made of white, with a million keyholes marked with pencil, all saying no, no, no, not here, no, no, no.
And a million more without, all closed, one of them perhaps holding forever inside of it, a pair of eyeholes set inside a mirror.
Valentine pulled out a pencil from his pocket. And he reached for a key that he'd thought he'd never have to use again.
One.
Two.
A hundred.
A hundred and one.
Jason Valentine shoved his hands in his pockets as he walked down the streets of Brighton, ignoring all of the drab and the dun and the sterile, yet somehow dirty, grey-white of it all.
It was like this everywhere that they stopped. After the chores were through and the tents were cleaned and the punters were pleased, it was a good deal of wandering. Not even joining the Campbell Family Circus had solved him of the wandering, and the waiting.
What he needed, he supposed, was one of those worlds, like in Helena's wild tales of a world where fish flew, and books could think, and every aspect of life involved etching out a living however one could, with Very Important Men who owned towers, working out juggling routines in the alleyways.
And a one, two, a one-two-three.
Like so.
Three hundred thirty seven.
Three hundred thirty eight.
Three hundred thirty nine.
Click.
There was no fanfare this time. No broad grin as Valentine desperately pulled the drawer open. No proud statement of 'presenting, the MirrorMask.'
He'd pull it open, and there'd be a sheet of paper inside. Some form of apology from Helena, saying, no, you can't use it, you aren't allowed to ruin someone else's life, and that would be that.
Ah yes, there it was, staring back at him, glinting in the bright whiteness of the room.
And reflected in the charm...
He reached in, and he pulled out the MirrorMask. Helena's consent.
And he stepped up to the window, muttering to himself thoughtfully.
"There's only one way out, and I'm taking it. Goodbye."
He pressed the mask to his face.
Naminé took a deep breath.
"His name is Valentine."
(OOC: preplayed with my superfly partner-in-crime importantman. Part 1 of 3, the other two are coming shortly. NFI, NFB, but OOC is massive love.)