fandomtownies | Café Fina, Thursday

Mod your service. Note: there will be an unexpected gap during Naminé's work schedule today, so this thread may be necessary around lunch.

She's sitting near the front, sketching furiously. And cursing under her breath.

Use this thread if your name starts with V, rhymes with "Alentine", and she's been avoiding you. (Locked, please.)

Valentine had been getting little twitches off and on since about Tuesday, and today he had noticed that they had gotten far, far worse than the days prior. There was no logical reason for them, really, and the best advice that the so-called "Really Useful Book" had to offer was the same-old about his mother.

And then it had dawned on him, somewhere around the point where the notion attempted to invade his brain that his insanity was all going to go away and things would be better and she was so very sorry- Naminé. Who had promised to fix what was not broken and no, no it would not do for her to go poking around in his head or whatever she was doing. Mostly, it had just been making studying for his last final into something of a chore. Every time he'd reach for his notes, he'd forget entirely what he was doing, get the odd urge to announce that he was just as he had always been, and would have to restart whatever he had been doing.

If he wasn't mad before, he was certainly going there. And he knew where Naminé worked. And that meant that there was only one thing to do.

The doors of Fina flew open, and there was a Valentine, looking slightly more than disgruntled.

"Damn it, woman, stop trying to fix what isn't broken!!"

He figured he at least deserved some of that cake that was on the specials board.

Naminé looked up suddenly, crayon snapping in her fingers. "Valentine," she breathed.

She flipped the cover of her sketchbook shut and tried to push it out of the way. "Are you all right?"

"I'd be far better if-" He cut himself off and leaned forward suspiciously. "What in the world are you drawing...?"

"Nothing," she said quickly, nudging the closed sketchpad a little further away. "Far better if what?"

Valentine facepalmed.

"And the nothing that you were drawing wouldn't happen to have anything to do with anyone's memories, might they?"

Naminé paled, but shook her head. "I'm drawing. I always draw."

She looked down at the hand which was still lingering protectively on the sketchpad's cover. She added, in a lower tone, "I told you I would fix it."

"I can't tell you enough, there isn't anything to be fixed," Valentine stressed, taking a deep breath to keep his temper in check. Yelling would be bad right about now, he was fairly certain. The cheese grater looked rather dangerous, with all those sharp pointy gratey things on him... "I said those words because I meant those words, and if you can't handle them, I think that's a pretty poor excuse to go poking around in my head trying to rearrange things. Honestly. Fix it...? If you don't like the idea that I might care, just say it and leave my memories out of this and I'll back away just as well. I've gone and developed a twitch."

"You wouldn't know if there were! That's what I've been trying to tell you! This has nothing to do with what I can handle!" She realized she was raising her voice and flushed. "I can't discuss this here. You know I can't. But any twitch you've developed has nothing to do with me."

Another deep breath. Those were important. Breathing was important.

"We have to talk about this, Naminé. We have to talk about this right bloody now, because you're going on an assumption and trying to fix something that might not be broken and I'd really rather you not be trying to redraw the contents of my brain or whatever it is you're doing in that book of yours. I would apologise for barging in here and causing an uproar, but it rather does feel like that's what you're doing to my memories at the moment, and I'd somewhat like it to stop."

"If I were changing your memories, you wouldn't know," she said softly. "You'd just start thinking of things one day and it would be different, and you wouldn't realize it hadn't always been that way. And I can't be changing things at any rate because -"

"Mademoiselle," said the cheese-grater, who had sidled up rather quietly and was now clearing his throat. "Pardon me, of course. But is everything all right?"

"It's fine, my apologies," she said quickly.

The cheese-grater looked between her and Valentine, unconvinced.

"It most certainly is not fine," Valentine insisted, looking at the cheese-grater somewhat stubbornly. "She and I need to talk. Need to talk. It is rather important, if you know what I'm saying."

The cheese-grater knew full well what he was saying. He just... knew wrong, really. So when he got that sly, 'but of course' grin on his face and insisted that they both follow him to the pantry, where they could talk and carry on and make all the noise they would like and nobody would notice, it was entirely possible that it wasn't really 'talking' that he had been referring to.

Ah, l'amour.

Naminé covered her eyes with a sigh as the door swung shut. "Wonderful. Now my boss thinks we're having a lovers' quarrel and have found our way to the pantry to steal kisses and make up."

Well, the cheese-grater wasn't exactly her boss, but the point stood.

"We could steal kisses and make up anyhow?" Valentine's suggestion was only partly joking, really. "Look- if somehow you have managed to do something wrong somewhere, don't you think we could at least compare notes before you dive in and redraw it all? What do you think you've done, exactly?"

It was difficult to be rational about this. Somehow, miraculously, Valentine was managing anyhow.

"It doesn't matter," she said softly, folding her arms. "It isn't working. I keep trying to draw it and it all comes out wrong."

Naminé looked over at Valentine with no small amount of confusion. "I thought that much was clear. I didn't redraw you properly. I wasn't intending to redraw you, but it's increasingly obvious that somehow, in reaching you, I did. And not as yourself, either. Filtered through a lens of something I ... wished to see, perhaps."

"What part of me is so improper," Valentine said, half asking, half pleading, "and how can you be sure, given that we had barely known one another when I left?" He took another breath. "It isn't so obvious to me, really, but I suppose it wouldn't be. Which just leaves me one more question, then..."

"We had barely known one another, when you were promising to come back to me?" she asked, in a very small voice. "Don't you see, that only ... if I meant so little to you then, how can I possibly mean this much to you now? You aren't being logical."

She closed her eyes, taking a long breath and trying to appear calm. "What's your question?"

That... wasn't how Valentine had meant it, really.

"You can care for a person without knowing them," Valentine said after a moment of feeling something like he had been punched in the gut by eleven monkeybirds who had all lined up for their turn, "you meant enough that I had to see you- had to see you before I left. But what did I know about you then? That you were excellent company... quiet, understanding, and that somehow we both had some level footing and that perhaps that all meant something. But we didn't... know much about one another? I imagine you didn't expect me to be- well. A coward, for one."

A few more invisible monkeybirds had stepped into line and he rather wanted to hunch over and stare at the floor for a while.

"If making me love you was so simple that you managed to do it purely by accident, and yet you still can't fix it... What if maybe it wasn't through your art? What if you didn't mean to, but I just ... fell...? On my own? Would it need to be fixed, then? If I really did? Love you? For you?"

"You aren't a coward," Naminé said quickly. "You went home to save your world. That's more than many would have done."

"And you couldn't. Can't. I'm not in your heart. I'm not in anybody's. I haven't one of my own. I'm nothing that was ever meant to be." She waved an arm vaguely, but there wasn't any energy behind it. She was using enough just to stand here with a pretense of calmness. "I'm nothing that anyone could ... feel that towards. That's how I know I did something wrong. The last time someone held his hands out to me and ... and said things, it was because I had twisted him into a misshapen wreck."

After a long silence - one in which Naminé very astonishingly managed not to cry - she added, in a barely audible voice, "That's how I know I've broken you, too."

"Bullshit," Valentine's lips said before his brain caught up to them. "Take a big step back and take a good look at yourself. You care about things, don't you? And you have the most stunning smile and your eyes- your eyes can catch a person who doesn't understand faces at all and make him have to remember how to breathe. And this is coming from a man who may or may not have actually existed his entire life before some girl thought him up and drew him into existance in her free time to fill some empty space on her wall. I don't know that I was ever really whole to begin with, and here you are telling me that you're impossible to love?"

He shook his head and looked up at her again. "I just can't buy that."

A few seconds passed.

Finally, Naminé cleared her throat. "I've been trying for two days to redraw everything ... every memory I could think of that we shared, to leave myself out. I thought that would fix things, somehow. And my drawings refused to cooperate. All my shapes turned into meaningless scribbles and my crayons snapped in my hand and the pages tore under my fingers. It's been entirely hopeless, and I've been growing more and more frustrated with myself. Because I know why it's happening."

She couldn't look up at him, not for this. "Because trying to take myself out of your memories, your heart - it's tearing me into pieces. And then I yell at myself rather loudly and remember that it's that much more important that I do, because nobody deserves this sort of ... forced enslavement, least of all you. So I try again, and the crayons snap and the paper tears. Around and around and around."

Valentine was quiet for a few seconds as well before he could even begin to find his voice.

"Perhaps that's because it's something that never was meant to be fixed," he insisted.

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