Preserving Echoes
The room was silent except for the soft scritch-scritch of pencil on paper, so Namine heard Xion enter despite her characteristic quiet. Still, she didn't look up, instead focusing on the shapes coming to life under her hands.
Xion peered over her shoulder at the drawing, careful not to block her light. Seemingly satisfied, she moved and curled into the armchair across from Namine, basking in the sun streaming through the windows.
Namine's eyes flickered up then, a small smile on her lips at the sight: Xion, in her all black, looked a bit like a cat, especially with her gaze turned outside. She turned back to drawing.
Namine didn't usually draw the things before her, or at least, not exactly. When she looked around her, at her friends and family, she sometimes saw them as…different people. Sometimes she saw different places, worlds vastly different than her own, superimposed in the distance. It was a little strange, but since it felt natural, she didn't question it. Instead, she recorded what she saw as drawings. It was a compulsion, a need to preserve these other worlds.
"Tell me a secret," Xion had once said. She and Namine were curled up together on the couch, sharing affectionate kisses.
Namine pushed a lock of black hair behind Xion's ear. "A secret…" She hummed a little, thinking. It was Xion asking, so it had to be a good secret. "I think," she started, then paused. "What I draw, Xion, I think it's real. Or was real."
Xion cocked her head, inquisitive. "Really?"
Namine nodded. "I draw what I see, what others don't. But what I see is like…an echo? It's strongest around the twins, Roxas and Sora." She stared off, thinking.
Xion let out a small giggle. "I was jealous once, you know? Of those two. You always seem to be drawing them, and never me." She nuzzled closer to Namine. "You never draw me."
Namine pressed a kiss to her hair to hide the expression on her face.
That was a secret that she wouldn't tell: when she saw Xion, she only saw her girlfriend fading away, and it always made her sad. She would rather keep her here, as she was.
By the time Namine finished her drawing, Xion had dozed off. Namine shook the memory from her mind, and turned her sketchbook to the next page.
Xion wasn't fading away, this time. She smiled, and picked up a pen, instead of a pencil. Scratched bold black lines, lent the harsh color a softness as she drew Xion.
Namine would preserve Xion like this, then.