AN: They're not mine, ok? I'm just borrowing them. I'll put them back when I've finished, I promise.

Of all the relationships that have formed between our gang of misfits, ours has to be the one that was never meant to happen. He's the one who kidnapped me, back when Sora was fighting Organisation XIII, so I could be used as bait. It didn't quite work out the way they planned, though. We spent most of our time talking, and got to know each other.

Axel didn't agree with what the Organisation were doing, which is why he let me escape, and later helped Sora. We all thought he was dead at that point, but he reappeared a few months later, when everyone had gone back to their original worlds.

I guess I missed him, because I was sitting in the secret place thinking about him, when I heard someone calling my name. I turned around and he was there, leaning against the wall, looking as arrogant as ever.

"Axel? What are you doing here?"

He shrugged, and walked towards me. "Where, exactly, is here?"

I laughed, he looked so confused. And that's unusual for him.

"Destiny Islands, where I live."

I led him out of the secret place, and straight into Sora and Roxas, which wasn't quite what I intended.

"What's he doing here?" Sora was, understandably, not impressed with Axel's appearance.

"I thought you were dead." Roxas seemed more shocked than annoyed, but they were in the Organisation together for a while.

"I thought so, too."

I dragged him away before he noticed Sora and Roxas were holding hands. I wanted to deal with things one at a time – I was confused enough already.

This wasn't supposed to happen. He wasn't meant to come back, I was meant to fall in love with either Sora or Riku, and we could all live happily ever after, like in the fairy tales. Except Sora turned out to be enamoured of Roxas, his Nobody, which I'm sure is probably impossible, and Riku's pretty taken with Naminé, my Nobody. I don't understand why Roxas and Naminé are separate people at all – as I understood it, they're part of Sora and me. Oh, I don't know. It's far too complicated.

And to make matters worse, Axel turns up and I'm forced to deal with those feelings that I thought I'd squashed. The ones that said I didn't mind being kidnapped as long as he was there. As we walked back up to the village, he said I was being quiet. I was. I knew that if I opened my mouth, I was going to say something stupid, embarrassing, or both. When he asked what was the matter, the words just came flooding out.

"I'm confused, ok? I don't know why you're here, how you got here or anything, and I'm trying to deal with my feelings for you that I thought would never be an issue because you were dead, but you're not, and I don't know what to do…"

He cut me off by placing a hand over my mouth. I tried to bite him, but he was having none of it.

"Your feelings for me?"

I nodded, feeling my face turn bright red. It's a hazard, or maybe a curse, of having pale skin, I blush at anything.

"And what might those be?"

He removed his hand, and sat down on a nearby rock while I paced up and down, wondering how exactly I ended up in this situation.

"Any time today, Kairi." The grin on his face would have been funny at any other time, but not when I was trying to figure out how to tell him I was in love with him. It wasn't until I saw the look on his face that I realised what I must have done.

"I said that out loud, didn't I?"

He didn't really need to answer; I already knew.

"I never realised, Kairi."

Something started to make sense then – all these things that weren't really possible, like Roxas and Naminé still existing, like Axel coming back when he was meant to be dead, all happened because somebody loved them. I still didn't understand how that worked, but now I knew why.

…………………

It's been five years now, and he's asked me to marry him. The wedding's going to be next month. Our relationship has broken every rule in the book, still is doing. We're rewriting those rules as we go along, and there's nothing I can do about it. I don't want to do anything about it – I couldn't be happier.

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