I Carry Your Heart
Disclaimer: I do not claim to own in part or whole, the Kingdom Hearts franchise, or any other companies, series, or franchises (or any noun for that matter) that may or may not be directly/indirectly related to Kingdom Hearts. I also do not claim to own "i carry your heart with me", as it was written by a brilliant man, E.. Now thats out of the way, enjoy the story.
'I wonder if I'll ever figure out what having a heart is like.' 'If I'll ever understand what it feels like to have emotions like sadness and love.' Its not that Roxas didn't try to understand, its just he couldn't. After mulitple explanations from Axel (Which made little to no sense to him at the time, he suspected Axel was avoiding the actual question), dictionary definitons out of the castle's archives, and the looks of annoyance he would receive from the other Organization members (Execept Demyx, Axel and Xion), Roxas had pretty much given up any hope of understanding. Until he got paired up with Xion one fateful day for a mission to Beast's Castle.
The ballroom in Beast's Castle always kept the light of life, but rarely had a sound to prove it. A dark circle appeared on the dance floor, and as the darkness from it expanded upward and took an oval shape, Roxas and Xion stepped out.
Roxas winced a bit from the light, and considering he just stepped out of pure dark. Xion couldn't blame him.
"Man, do they have to keep the room this lit up?" Roxas continued slightly peeved. "It's not like they even use this room!"
While chuckling, Xion said, "True, but it does look nice, doesn't it?"
"We're not here to take in the scenery, ya know." Roxas grinned.
"I know, Roxas." Xion thought for a second. "We're here to eliminate a Darkside, right?"
While nodding, Roxas said, "According to Saix, yeah." "Cmon let's get going." Roxas started to jog across the marble floor.
Both teens peeked their heads out the double doors from the ballroom.
Xion barely caught the whisper from Roxas, "Alright, the coast is clear."
As if stepping on clouds, Roxas and Xion stepped into the foyer.
"We're gonna have to check everywhere!" Xion groaned.
After a moment of thought, Roxas had an idea.
"Well, Darksides are pretty large, so there's only two places where one could be."
Xion now just realizing that Roxas spoke, gave him a quizzical look.
Roxas pinched the bridge of his nose, "What I mean is, that the Darkside can only be In the West wing corridor, or out in the courtyard."
"Oh, why didn't you say so sooner?"
Roxas shrugged. "Just thought about it right now."
Xion, accepting the answer, started running towards the doors leading to the courtyard.
Roxas was completely surprised, while reaching out, hissed "What are you DOING?"
Xion looked back for just enough time to blurt, "I'll check the courtyard, I'm sure you can handle the west wing, right?"
Sighing, Roxas agreed.
For once, Roxas hoped she knew what she was doing.
Roxas walked the L-shaped hallway eyeing each and every clawmark as if they were going to attempt to do him harm.
"Looks like the Beast has bee-"
His sentence was interrupted when he saw a huge black object about to smash him like the fist of an angry god.
As Roxas dodge rolled out of the way he realized that the huge mass of black WAS a fist, and that could only mean one thing...
Roxas dared to follow the length of the dark arm to the set of yellow eyes.
Or he would've if he didn't already know what the arm belonged to, but more important was the splotch of green in the giant's fist.
'What in the world is that?' Roxas wondered.
Roxas barely had time to dodge the Darksides brutal downward swing, only to get hit by the shockwave caused by the missed attack.
Roxas grunted as he was thrown to the ground. Quickly recovering, Roxas casted Cure, and ran toward the Heartless.
After a good three minutes of dodging, slashing and casting more magic than he thought he had equipped (He could've SWORE that he equipped 8 cures, not 20), Roxas was about spent.
"The Darkside can't possibly have enough strength to go much further..." About to charge, Roxas tripped on a deep gash in the floor.
Roxas would have laughed at the way he fell if the situation wasn't so dire.
Realizing he was on his "last legs", as Lexaeus put it, he gambled on a last ditch effort. Roxas summoned all his reserve strength possible. He felt a point where he couldn't gather any more power.
'It's now or I'm done for..."
The Darkside seemed to realize what Roxas was planning to do, and sought to end Roxas before he finished gathering his strength. The Darkside pulled back for another slam, and brought his fist down on the boy...
"Nice try!"
...only to get blasted back my a wave of light flooding from Roxas. Roxas quickly shifted to a reckless attack stance and mercilessly started hacking and slashing at his opponent.
Lifting its arm in an attempt to defend itself was the last thing the darkside did before it fell to the ground in a cloud of dissappearing darkness.
Before Roxas could congratulate himself on his swordsmenship, he got hit by something rather heavy on the back of his head. Falling to the ground, it took all his concentration to not slip into the dreamworld.
'Don't pass out, don't pass out, don't pass out...' Slowly getting to his feet, Roxas rubbed the back of his head. 'What was that?' Roxas turned to see the same splotch of green from earlier, only in book form.
'How could a book weigh that much?' Then Roxas wondered how it came to hit his head in the first place. 'Well since this thing caused me so much trouble, might as well look at it, and I'm curious what could possibly be in the book to make it that heavy.'
Roxas opened the book to a random page and was about to read when...
"Hey Roxas!"
Roxas whirled around and came face to face with Xion.
"Oh, hey Xion." Roxas continued, "We can RTC now, I took care of the target."
"Really? Oh good, because I got ambushed by a ton of heartless in the courtyard, and I didn't feel like fighting a huge one after that." Xion then glanced down at the book and then at Roxas.
"What's that you have there?"
Roxas was confused for a second. "Huh?" Sudden realization hit him afterwards. "Oh, right, the book." Roxas started to convey his story about his fight with the target, how the book was in it's hand, and how Roxas got ahold of it.
After he finished, Xion inquired further. "What would a heartless want with a book?"
Roxas shrugged for the second time today, "I dunno."
'Maybe if I were to read some of it, I could get an idea.' Roxas then started staring off into space.
"Roxas, I have an idea." Roxas snapped out of his daydream. "What?" Xion rolled her eyes. "Why don't you try reading some of the book? Maybe that will give us a clue as to why the heartless wanted it."
'I was planning on doing just that, but now that you suggested it I might as well.' Roxas flipped to another random page and started reading out loud so Xion could hear him clearly.
"i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart)
i am never without it (anywhere i go you go, my dear: and whatever is done by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet)
i want no...
"What... What am I reading?" Roxas asked rhetorically.
"I don't know, but keep reading!" Xion said excitedly.
Roxas stared at her, "Why?"
Xion thought about it for a second. "I don't know, but I have a feeling if we were to read the rest of it..." "Well we just might understand what it's like to have a heart. To feel emotions, like love or...um yeah."
Roxas didn't need any more convincing, and he started reading with earnest.
i want no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
Roxas stole a glance at Xion, she was completely enthralled to the poem, and he could've swore she had a bit of blush on her cheeks, but he quickly dismissed that thought because it could be the lighting or from fighting heartless.
and its you are whatever a moon as always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
Roxas wasn't going to pretend that he understood the last two lines, but he was sure they had some profound meaning.
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;
which grows higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
Roxas felt something deep within himself shift for a second, but when he thought inwardly to inspect it, it was gone as soon as it came.
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
Roxas didn't know why, but he stared straight at Xion as he said the last part.
"I carry your heart (I carry it in my heart)"
After he finished it seemed to Roxas that Xion was going to say something heartfelt (If it was possible) but instead she said...
"Nice dramatic finish, Roxas. I bet even Axel would have a hard time imitating that." Both teens immediately started laughing.
After their fits of giggling settled down, Roxas and Xion shared what one might interpret as an awkward silence, but Roxas didn't mind the quiet. He was simply glad to have Xion's company.
Roxas smiled sincerely, took Xion's hand and started walking.
"Roxas where are we going?"
"We're RTCing." He said it as if it was the most redundant question ever.
"Already?" Xion whined. "Wait, we're going back to the castle?"
Roxas nodded.
"Roxas, wait."
Roxas stopped and let go of Xion's hand. He looked back at her.
"Roxas, I know it's getting late, but can we still go to the clock tower?"
Roxas was about to say all of the reasons they couldn't (Mainly Saix and the fact it WAS getting pretty late), but then Xion interrupted before he could say anything.
"Please?"
Roxas thought about about it. 'Well, it's just Saix, heck, I don't see why we couldn't sit at the clock tower for a bit.'
Giving in, Roxas replied, "Sure."
Xion immediately smiled, took Roxas' hand, grabbed the book, and entered into the dark corridor to Twilight Town.
Roxas breathed a sigh of contentment, 'I might not understand the heart that much better, but I think I understand Xion more than I ever have.'
A/N First fanfic. Tell me what you think. Also, the poem is by E. E. Cummings, well known for his lack of capitalization and punctuation. I've been reading fanfics for a while, and never thought I would write one, but that changed when I saw this poem. I just had to write SOMETHING with this poem in it. I also have newfound respect for writers who have multichaptered stories. I used to think 'CMON HURRY! NEXT CHAPTER!' Now I understand how hard it really is, thinking about the main conflict, characters, conversation, events, and descriptions. And then writing about it without it sounding horrible. Granted this took me about 2 1/2 hours to crank out, it was still difficult. Anyway, I wanted to put this up on Valentine's day, but new accounts have to wait three days before they can post the story. So that's why it's really late. Thanks for reading, please review, and constructive criticism is gladly welcomed. Happy late Valentine's day.