Disclaimer: I don't own Kingdom Hearts, but you already knew that. I don't own the infamous "The Legend of Zelda" reference either.
Beta Reader: Madammina! Thank you!
Chapter 5
The next morning, after telling Demyx that it was time for him to come out of the closet, Roxas walked to the Grey Room, figuring that he would go on his mission, have ice-cream with Axel, and hopefully get an answer to his question from Demyx’s mysterious friend. But when he reached the lounge, he found Luxord waiting for him with two messages: they were going on a mission together, and Xion had fallen into a deep sleep and wasn’t waking up. After that, the question of love went right out of Roxas’ head. He spent the following week going from his mission, to eating ice cream with Axel, and then spending the rest of the day by Xion’s bedside. As the days passed and her condition didn’t change, he stopped paying attention to what the other members did as he spent all his time worrying about her.
Finally, Demyx looked up from his sitar one day and said, “Man, can you stop pacing around like that? I can’t concentrate on my music!” Roxas shrugged and sat down on the couch across from him. “So I’m guessing she’s not awake yet?” asked Demyx as he went back to tuning his instrument, “That’s so weird, isn’t it?” Roxas nodded. “Dude, are you feeling okay? You’ve been acting a little weird too.”
“I don’t know,” replied Roxas. He didn’t really want Demyx asking him questions, though he hadn’t really talked to the guy in a while. In fact, the last time they’d ever had a conversation was about a week ago… “Oh yeah,” said Roxas, sitting up a little bit and feeling eager to briefly get his mind off of his own problems, “Did your friend ever tell you about love?”
Demyx winced. “Oh yeah…right…about THAT…”
“You forgot, didn’t you?”
“No, I did not!” said Demyx in an offended voice, “Geez Roxas, give me some more credit than that!”
“So what happened?” asked Roxas curiously.
“Well, I went to visit her, and we were sitting on this dock and just talking like usual, and then I said, ‘Hey, how would you define ‘love’?’ And she was like, ‘Huh? Demyx, is this your weird way of hitting on me or something?’ And then I was like, ‘WHAT? No way!’ and then I made up this excuse about how my clueless little brother had asked me and I had no idea what to tell him, and then SHE says, ‘Demyx, you dork, you couldn’t explain something simple like ‘love’ to him?’ and
I said, “Well, excuuuuuuuse me, princess…’”
“Demyx?” Roxas interrupted, “Would you just get to the point?”
“I’m getting there, I’m getting there! So then she starts waxing lyrics about how love is the most important connection that you could ever have with a person and that you’ll always be there for each other and how it’s full of sunshine and rainbows and puppies and passion and longing and she was going on and on and
on. So…I kind of, sort of, well, I spaced out a bit, and the next thing I knew, she was asking me what I thought. I didn’t want to tell her that I’d basically stopped listening to what she was saying, because then she’d probably smack me over the head, so I just told her that she was a genius and thanked her for helping us out.”
“But she didn’t help us out,” said Roxas slowly.
Forget love, he thought,
I barely understood a word of what he was saying!
“Yeah, but SHE doesn’t know that!” said Demyx proudly.
“So…that’s it? You never found out the answer?”
“Nope. Sorry, man.”
“It’s okay. Forget about it.”
“Roxas?” The two boys looked up in surprise and saw Saïx standing over them with a stern expression on his face. “Aren’t you supposed to be collecting hearts in Twilight Town?”
Roxas jumped up. “Oh, right, the mission! Yeah, I didn’t forget or anything…” He did not like Saïx bossing him around, but nowadays he found himself feeling eager to get out of the castle and away from the others when he wasn’t with Axel or watching over Xion. So, in a weird way, he liked being sent out on missions. “I’m on it!” he told Saïx, “‘Later, Demyx!”
As he teleported away, he could have sworn he heard Saïx growling at Demyx, “
Have you been rubbing off on him?”
Twilight Town was just as calm and peaceful as usual, at least when there were no Heartless around. But somehow, they always seemed to show up as soon as Roxas took out his Keyblade. He fought off his enemies with ease and relished the ability to let off some steam. Xion wasn’t waking up, nobody cared except Axel, Saïx was acting like a jerk…
…and Demyx STILL couldn’t tell him what “love” meant? Not that it
really mattered, but how was it that nobody in the Organization could answer a simple question? He’d thought they were wise and intelligent, that they knew everything! Were they really stupid after all, or were they just hiding something from him? What was it about “love” that they didn’t want him to know?
“OW!”
Roxas jumped and stopped swinging his Keyblade to see who had made the noise. The culprit was a familiar-looking brunette girl in an orange shirt and khaki pants. She was glaring at him and rubbing her shoulder. “I was trying to get your attention!” she cried, “And you whacked me with that key-thing that you’re using!”
“Oh!” said Roxas, as he blushed a little, “Sorry, I didn’t hear you!”
“Yeah, yeah,” grumbled the girl, but she still smiled a little, “Boys are all the same. Completely deaf to everyone when you’ve got weapons in your hands and you’re in the ‘zone,’ or whatever Hayner calls it.”
“The what?”
“What I was trying to ask you was why you’re back in town? Are you staying long?”
“Huh? No, just for the afternoon.”
“Oh. Well, if you change your mind, there’s a Struggle tournament going on at the end of the week, and I was wondering if you’d like to sign up? It’s not official; it’s just a practice run for the real thing at the end of the summer. You looked like you’d be great at it!”
“Really?” He had no idea what “Struggle” was, but hey, a compliment was a compliment. “Thanks! But I think I’ll pass.”
The girl nodded thoughtfully. “You look like you’ve got a lot on your mind.”
Roxas shrugged and looked at the ground. “You could say that.”
“Anything that I can help you with?”
“I don’t see how you can,” replied Roxas, “Unless…wait. Maybe you could at least answer one question for me.”
“Yeah?”
“Can you describe love to me?”
The brunette stared at him with wide eyes. Then she stared some more. “
That’s what’s bothering you?” she asked, “Wait, this isn’t a lame pick-up line, is it?”
Roxas shook his head. “I don’t even know what a pick-up line is.”
“It’s when you try to…wait, you really don’t understand love?” Her voice sounded a little more sympathetic, though no less confused. “How is that even possible? I mean, I knew boys were clueless, but not
that clueless!”
“I’m not clueless!” he practically shouted.
The girl put her hands up. “Sorry, sorry, I wasn’t trying to offend you or anything! Hang on, let me think of how I could answer this…hmm…” She turned her back on him and pondered the question for a few moments. When she finally turned around again, she had a little grin on her face. “Actually, maybe it would help if I just
showed you an example of love.”
“How would you do that?” asked Roxas. And why hadn’t anyone in the Organization thought of that solution? He hadn’t realized that love could be demonstrated.
“Well…there’s a new movie that just came out that’s all about love, but Hayner and Pence won’t see it with me! Want to come with me instead? Not as a date or anything, but it’d be great to finally get to see this movie, and it might help you! Please? I’ll buy the popcorn!”
What’s a movie, what is a date, and what is popcorn? wondered Roxas. “Um, okay,” he said out loud, “By the way, I forget your name.”
The girl smiled. “Olette. And you’re…Rocco?”
“Roxas,” he corrected.
“Roxas! That’s right! Ok, I’ll lead the way!”
***
Several hours later, Axel arrived in Twilight Town and sat on the clock tower, waiting for Roxas to appear. Said boy showed up a few minutes later with his ice cream in hand and a thoughtful expression on his face. “Hey, Roxas!” called Axel, “How was your mission?”
“Weird,” replied his friend.
“Weird? You were here, weren’t you? How weird could it have been?”
“Well…see…I met this girl…and we went to the movies together…”
Axel spit out his ice cream. “Say that again?”
“Yeah, her name was Olette,” explained Roxas, “She saw me fighting Heartless and we started talking. Then I asked her what love was…”
“Uh-oh.”
“…and at first she didn’t believe me…”
“Oh boy.”
“…but then she said it would be easier if she demonstrated love to me…”
“
Sweet Kingdom Hearts!” Axel slapped a hand against his face. “Roxas,
what did you do?”
Roxas shook his head innocently. “I already told you. We went to the movies because she said that there was one about love that she really wanted to see anyway. She bought us some popcorn- which tastes really, really good, by the way, you should try some- and then we talked some more and then she went home. And I bought ice cream and came here.”
“That’s it?” asked Axel warily, “No kissing or…anything?”
“No, that happened a lot in the movie that we saw, but we didn’t try anything like that. That would’ve been weird.”
Axel let out a huge sigh of relief. “Good. Because that would NOT have looked good on your report to Saïx. You know we’re not supposed to interact with people unless absolutely necessary, right?”
“Hey, she invited me!” protested Roxas.
“All right, all right, I promise I won’t say anything. Just be more careful next time, okay?” Roxas nodded, and Axel yawned and stretched. “So…are you finally satisfied? Did you ever get an answer to your question?”
Roxas nodded again. “Yeah, I think I did…and I can see why you guys had such a hard time explaining it to me.”
“Oh? What do you think love is?”
Roxas frowned for a moment, trying to come up with the right words. Then he said, “Well, like you told me, it’s a strange, special relationship between two people.” Axel nodded. “And it sounds kind of dangerous. I guess that’s why nobody wanted to tell me about it.”
“Yeah…wait…
dangerous?”
“Well, yeah,” said Roxas, “I get it now, why Xaldin called it foolish and Demyx said that people have trouble admitting when they’re in love. It’s a really strange emotion where you suddenly feel like sucking your friend’s mouth all the time, that “kissing” thing that you and Olette mentioned. And it makes you cry a lot for some reason. And once you love someone, you start acting really stupid, especially the girls. But the guys are also pretty stupid because they can never understand why the girls are crying and they seem to lose their shirts a lot too. At least in the movie they did, because they hardly ever wore any. I don’t know, it’s kind of hard to explain now, but to me, love is when you spend a lot of time with somebody that you’re not supposed to spend time with, and you suck each other’s faces when no one’s looking, and unlike what Xemnas told me, you’re not allowed to love more than one person because otherwise everyone gets really mad.” Roxas stopped to take a bite out of his ice cream. “It’s a very weird emotion, and I hope I never experience it even if I do get my heart back.”
He looked at Axel, expecting to hear some kind of confirmation. Instead, Axel threw back his head and laughed. For a long time, he laughed and laughed and laughed, harder than Roxas had ever heard a Nobody do so, until it almost looked like tears had appeared in his eyes. “Wow!” he gasped, “Oh wow…that was…I can’t even…” He couldn’t go on because he was still laughing too hard.
“What’s so funny?” asked Roxas, feeling a little peeved by this reaction, “Was I wrong?”
Axel needed another moment to control himself. After taking several deep breaths and making sure that no more laughing fits were about to come up, he said, “Roxas? I have no idea why Xemnas thought it would be smart to put
me in charge of you when you first got here, but for once, I think he might’ve made a smart decision.”
Roxas blinked. “What are you talking about?”
“Nothing. But wow, that’s the best definition of love that I’ve ever heard. I can’t remember the last time that I laughed so hard…” His voice trailed off, and he looked away from his young friend as if to watch the sunset.
Roxas didn’t know what to say, but it didn’t sound like he’d done anything wrong. “Okay…” he replied, “Thanks…I guess.”
And so ended Roxas’s epic quest to understand the definition of love!
***
“So, there you have it!” said Demyx, taking a bow, “That’s one of the crazy things that happened in the Organization while you were asleep!”
Xion stared at him. “Um, okay. That was a good story and I’m glad things worked out for Roxas. But do you realize that we’ve just wasted a lot of time when we could’ve been doing our mission?”
“
Really?” gasped Demyx, “No
way! Well, unfortunately, telling you that story and acting out all the parts has really tired me out…soooooo…you think you could help me out by doing most of the work here?”
“…you’re just trying to get out of work again, aren’t you?”
“Yes. Yes, I am.”
Xion sighed. It would’ve been smarter to blow off Demyx’s attempts to distract her in the beginning, especially when she could’ve simply asked Roxas to tell her about that incident later. But the pair had already wasted twenty minutes and Demyx was more likely to be a hindrance now. “Fine,” she said to her lazy colleague, “But just this once!”
Demyx punched a fist in the air and followed her through the mazes of Wonderland. And he silently thanked Roxas for being unable to grasp the concept of romance.
THE END!
A/N: At LAST, this fic is finally done! It wasn't even that long, which shows how lazy I am. But I just wanted to thank everyone who reviewed; this was the biggest response that I've ever gotten for one of my KHI fanfics! I really enjoyed reading your comments, and as always, if you have any criticisms, let me know, because I want to improve! Thanks so much!