Disclaimer: I don't own Kingdom Hearts nor will I ever.
Not the Easy Way
To say that Olette had completely forgotten the boy called Roxas would be a lie. Well, you could say she forgot enough to trick herself into believing she didn't have a third best friend. When prompted there were certain things she could recall. Olette knew that these things were so random yet specific that she couldn't have made them up.
It was even easier to remember things after the discovery of the second Twilight Town, the virtual one. Where one teenage boy's life was built upon him eventually becoming someone else entirely.
Picking more items than necessary would to most people be labeled as absent mindedness. Like when Olette would show up to the Usual Spot with four sea salt ice creams instead of three. Someone always ended up eating it anyway but that's not really the point. Or the times she packs extra food for their beach trips. It's always been evenly distributed amongst them even now when there seems to be too much. The two boys are usually left with that too full feeling – never once do they complain though, for Olette's cooking is the best they ever had. Sometimes she notices Pence and Hayner doing things like that too. Pence will show up with an extra soda pop and Hayner will shift so there's enough room (on the train, on the couch…) for a fourth person who will never show. So while most people call it being absent minded Olette likes to call it remembering.
When she really tries to think about it Olette can recall the general outline of Roxas' room. He'd always set his backpack just to the side of his door. His bookcase contained mostly graphic novels. Olette's favorite thing about running over his room in her mind was when she got to how he organized his possessions – be it CDs, DVDs, shirts, and so on. He didn't organize them alphabetically, by genre, or even by color scheme. No, he organized things by his favorites. He started with his favorites then went left to right to his not so favorites. So to find the particular movie you wanted to see or what manga you wanted to borrow you really had to know Roxas himself.
Roxas had been told that he wouldn't remember anything from his life after he joined with Sora. That being said for being meshed with Sora as he liked to call it he remembered more than he wanted to.
Roxas had always been good at math. Give him a quadratic equation or a parabola then no problem but a Shakespearean sonnet was a different story. Olette had always helped him with English. Pence never had the patience and Hayner didn't get it either. The best part about Olette being his tutor was that she had a way of making everything sound so simple even when it wasn't. Othello made sense now – with her guidance he could even complete the poem they had to write for class.
Really though, the best or at least his favorite part of Olette tutoring him was the manner she went about it. They would always sit side by side, at particularly hard parts she'd point to what had stumped him and lean in to explain it in the most understanding way. When she leaned like that he could make out that she smelled like peppermint and sunshine. It was then that he hoped that he was the only boy to get close enough to know she didn't really smell like oranges as everyone assumed.
Sometimes Roxas wonders if thinking about the Twilight gang (specifically Olette) is some minor betrayal to Axel, his first friend. But then he gets over it quickly deciding it wasn't his fault he forgot all about Axel and the Organization, it wasn't his fault that he was stuck in some made up town, and it certainly wasn't his fault that he had fallen for a girl with green eyes that he'd never get the chance to tell he loved her as more than a friend. When his mind wandered he'd wonder what it would be like to introduce Axel to Twilight Town, officially that is. He was positive that he'd get along with Hayner. Pence would be harder to tell with but even if he didn't he wouldn't be mean or anything. The reaction he could picture best was Olette's. She'd give one of her sweet smiles that had won over the whole town (including him) – well, everyone but the Disciplinary Committee. Which is a damn good thing because Seifer realizing what made Olette so special from every girl in existence made Roxas' (Sora's) blood boil. Even though Axel would already know because that's just how their friendship worked, he could imagine telling Axel that Olette was off-limits for very top secret reasons. Then Axel would pull him into a noogie and make him spill all the gory details. Maybe in the process even convince him to tell her. Even though he had this all thought out he doesn't like to dwell on the what-ifs or could-have-beens for too long. He does have access to Sora's memories after all, so he's all too aware of what really went down.
Love was supposed to be this hard, arduous thing. At least according to the movies it was. It was supposed to make you loopy and act like you only had twenty-four hours to live. That being said falling for Olette was probably the easiest thing he had ever done. As he grew up the more natural it became to love her. The hard part came much later, when he was ripped away from her and this town. Never knowing if she could have felt the same and what they could have been was the hard part. Missing her when she didn't know who he was and seeing her through Sora's eyes was hard.
The second easiest thing he could have ever done (or first if you thought of the sequence of events) was fall for Namine. Namine had been there since he had been involved in the Organization. She was the person who told him he was never meant to exist. It would have been so incredinbly easy. Loving Namine would be like loving Kairi – second nature. Now that's what Roxas decided was so wrong about the whole thing. He didn't want to love her because she was a part of Kairi and that's who Sora loved. It wouldn't have been fair to any of the parties involved.
Sora wasn't the same boy that he had been. He had been through so many things that could only have changed him. Riku and Kairi had been changed as well, which was to be expected. It seemed all three of them had grown up several times over on their travels. So when he came across Kairi and some boy from her school he wasn't as shaken up about it as he thought he would be. They would have drifted apart eventually anyway, so that she had been able to find someone was somehow reassuring. His heart wasn't broken but more bruised – which was to be expected with a first love.
It didn't take Sora long to move on from his bruising as he was always one to bounce back quick. He threw himself into his old life. While he waited for new from the King he sparred with Riku, played blitzball with Wakka and Tidus, emmersed himself in schoolwork, and was chased after by Selphie and Kairi. Schoolwork took up the majority of Sora's time since he had much to catch up on from before. One day while he was sitting at his desk working on a haiku for English his pencil stopped. He had this sudden brilliant idea to go visit Twilight Town. He hadn't been there since finding out about the second Twilight Town and he missed the trio that hung out around the Usual Spot. Sora bounced back fast but Roxas still felt bad pushing Olette into the forefront of Sora's mind.
Sora's ride to Twilight Town went by fast. His head was filled with thoughts of the Sandlot, Struggle tournaments, seeing if Hayner had improved, showing the Disciplinary Committee what's what, and other such things. Roxas sat back amongst all of Sora's thoughts feeling extremely guilty. In fact Roxas felt so bad that when Sora bounded into the Usual Spot he felt as if he had dragged him there himself. Then Olette lifted her head from the chemistry homework spread out in front of her until her gaze hit Sora.
-Then she tilted her head just so – and gosh that smile blew both their breaths away.
For Roxas it was only the millionth time but that didn't make it feel old to him at all. She didn't direct it at anyone else but him. She had a different, happy smile for everyone else.
For Sora this was the first time such a smile had been directed at him – specifically from Olette. Yet it was so heartbreakingly familiar… This smile is what cemented Olette into Sora's heart.
This was the first but definitely not the last vacation he took to Twilight Town. Struggle tournaments and beach trips followed. Sometimes with the whole gang would go, including visits with Riku and Kairi. Eventually trips with just Olette and Sora would pop up more and more often.
One such outing started with going to the beach together. Sora with his obnoxious red swimming trunks. Olette would wear her orange one-piece bathing suit with a ruffle near her butt. She would try to build a sand castle, although she never got very far before Sora would run over with seaweed. He'd chase her into the water by threatening to put it in her hair, they both knew he'd never do it but where's the fun in that? Once they had taken the train back it was dark. Trailing along towards her house in their hands were sea salt ice creams, their available hands were linked between them. On her doorstop that night he kissed her for the very first time.
In the end what happened between Sora and Olette had nothing to do with wayward memories or wishful thinking on Roxas' part. But it had everything to do with Olette and Sora.