Disclaimer: I do not own Code Lyoko. It belongs to Moonscope. This fanfic contains Spoilers for all of Code Lyoko Season Two, but more specifically the last two episodes, Revelation and The Key.
Early Morning Confessions
.o0o.
Yumi Ishiyama knew that something was wrong when she opened her eyes. She sat up and turned her head towards an empty futon next to hers. It seemed that Aelita, who had been staying at Ishiyama home since school had ended for the summer break two days before, was having problems sleeping. The teenage girl looked at her alarm clock and noticed that it was two in the morning.
Yumi had no idea why her friend and comrade was waking up in the middle of the night, but she intended to find out. After climbing out of her futon, the Japanese girl walked out of her room.
It didn't take long for the oldest of her group of friends to find Aelita sitting down on the floor in the living room, a cup of tea resting on the Japanese style table. Yumi could see that her pink-haired friend was still wearing her nightgown, and it seemed like she hadn't even touched the tea yet. "Is something wrong, Aelita?"
Yumi heard her friend gasp. The pink-haired girl turned her attention to her hostess.
"It's nothing," Aelita said after a moment.
Yumi walked up to the table and sat down. "Liar," she said teasingly. "So why don't you tell me what's wrong."
Aelita turned her head away.
Yumi thought that she had an idea about what was bothering Aelita. "It's about XANA, isn't it?" The black-haired girl heard Aelita say that XANA wasn't the whole problem. She frowned. "Is it about your dad?"
"No," Aelita answered. "I said it's nothing, I don't want to talk about it."
"You're worried," Yumi stated.
"Of course I am," Aelita replied, turning her attention back to Yumi. "If Jeremie hadn't re-activated the super computer, I would have died and XANA wouldn't have escaped."
Yumi's eyes widened. "You tried to kill yourself?"
Aelita sighed. "Jeremie already lectured me about that before the mission. I just didn't want anyone to die because I wanted to live."
"I know that," Yumi said. "That was what, the third time you were ready to die to protect the world?"
Aelita blushed. "Not like it matters now," she muttered. "XANA is free from Lyoko. For all we know, he might not even need to activate a tower in order to attack now."
"Aelita, that wasn't your fault," Yumi insisted. "If you're going to blame yourself, Jeremie, Odd, Ulrich, and I are just as much to blame." She heard Aelita laugh bitterly, and she knew that she wasn't doing so well.
"There's no reason for you to take that much responsibility," Aelita said.
"And why should you have to take that much responsibility?" Yumi asked.
"I'm older than you," the pink-haired girl stated simply.
"I'm the one in the higher grade," Yumi countered.
"I shouldn't have gotten you and the guys involved with XANA," Aelita said, ignoring Yumi's statement. "It was so irresponsible of me."
"How is wanting to live irresponsible?" Yumi asked, and looked over at the teacup. For the first time, she noticed that there was an absence of steam coming from it.
"When you put the lives of four children at risk, it's irresponsible, no matter what the circumstances," Aelita said.
"But you're still a child as well," Yumi said.
Aelita shook her head. "That's the thing, Yumi, I may be a child physically, but I am not a child. If my father had never virtualized me in the first place, I wouldn't have become friends with any of you."
Yumi bit her lip nervously. "What makes you say that? I'm sure we would have met sometime at school---"
"No, we wouldn't have," Aelita said suddenly, cutting the other girl off in mid sentence. The pink-haired girl looked Yumi in the eyes. "If I was never virtualized, I would be at least twenty-four-years-old, Yumi."
The Japanese girl opened her mouth, but then closed it as she realized that she didn't have anything to say. In fact, she hadn't thought about that at all. Aelita's father, Franz Hopper, had virtualized his daughter and himself sometime in 1994. But seeing Aelita as a twelve-year-old girl made it hard for her to think of her as anything else.
"You have all your memories of your life before the first materialization, right?" Yumi asked. She saw Aelita nod. "Plus you have the memories of being inside Lyoko. Just how old are you mentally anyway?"
"I don't know," Aelita answered. "There were some memories from before the supercomputer was shut down the first time, and then the year and a half that I've known you guys. I'm at least fourteen mentally, but probably more along the lines of fifteen or sixteen."
"Do you really think that you can handle XANA yourself?" Yumi asked, bringing the conversation back on topic with some hurt and anger in her voice.
"No, but it doesn't make me feel any less guilty," Aelita replied. "And it's not just XANA that I feel guilty about."
Yumi looked at Aelita with confusion. "Why? What's wrong?"
"Jeremie," Aelita said after a few moments.
Yumi blinked. It was really too early for her to be doing this. "What about Jeremie?"
"His feelings about me," Aelita said. "I know that he likes me."
"Of course he likes you, you're his friend," Yumi said.
"Yumi, I know Jeremie likes me 'like that'," Aelita clarified. "And I feel the same way."
"So, what's the…" Yumi began, before realizing what Aelita was getting at. Before she had gotten her memory back, Aelita had acted like a twelve-year-old girl. And in some ways, she still did. But if she felt guilty about having people half her chronological age in a fight against a demonic A.I…
…Then why wouldn't she feel guilty about having romantic feelings for one of those same people?
"I see you understand," Aelita stated, bringing her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them.
"Look, Aelita," Yumi began, "I'm not going to pretend that I'm the expert on romance. After all, if I was, I'd probably be married to Ulrich already---"
Aelita shook her head as she laughed.
"--- But for right now I don't think romance really matters that much," she finished. "With XANA out of Lyoko, we don't know how dangerous he's going to be. We can only assume the worst."
"I know that!" Aelita exclaimed. "But it's almost the same as knowing that I can't fight XANA alone. Just because I know that it can't be helped or that it isn't appropriate, it doesn't stop me from feeling guilty about it."
Yumi shook her head. "You're a good person, Aelita, a lot of other people would've stopped caring a while ago."
"Do you really put so little faith in people, Yumi?" Aelita asked.
"I don't know," Yumi replied honestly.
There was silence for a moment.
"Do you think you'll be able to get back to sleep?" Yumi asked.
Aelita shook her head. "I have too many worries right now," she answered.
Yumi stood up and picked up Aelita's untouched teacup. "Then I should get us some more tea."
As Aelita saw Yumi walk into the kitchen, she smiled.
Maybe some of her guilt was unfounded after all.
The End
.o0o.
Author's Notes:
My first foray into the Code Lyoko fandom, and I use a plot point that everyone seems to be ignoring despite the cheap angst that it can cultivate too! Really, I'm surprised no one's played the "Aelita's older than everyone else" card yet.
In all seriousness though, if anyone outside the Lyoko gang finds out that Aelita Stones is actually Aelita Hopper, there's going to be a lot of problems.
And no, it did not take a five-minute conversation to get rid of all her guilt about everything, especially since she felt guilty even before the end of The Key.
I feel compelled to warn you now that of anything that I write for Code Lyoko, this one's the least likely to become AU by the time that Season Three airs.
And here's the generic "Please Review" line that needs to be added in.