A/N: Thanks so much for all the feedback; I definitely wasn't expecting that many people ;o;

Also, I'd like to note two things.

One, despite part of this chapter, I don't really plan on this being all high school-y. Unless Bond of Flame08 wants it that way. There can always be fun things in between, but I didn't plan on it being the focus.

Two- This has drama. It could be even called a tragedy. Which means there /may/ be an unhappy ending. So please do put your pitchforks and torches away. C: There's nothing like working hard on a story and having people freaking out because it didn't go how they expected. It's a story for goodness sake. XD (unless of course, Bond (this is much easier to type!), you absolutely don't want an unhappy ending.)

Rambling over, now on to the chapter that has been half written forever~


Ice Cream

"Thank you so much for letting me stay at your house, Olette. I have no idea where I would have gone otherwise." Xion offered a shy smile in return for the kindness Olette had shown her. Wanting to turn her pockets inside out looking for something of more value to repay her with, she refrained for she knew a few clumps of lint wouldn't cut it, so instead she nervously drummed her fingers on her thighs in anxious anticipation for the rest of the day.

It had only taken a single week to get integrated into the school system. Surprisingly enough, the school board didn't ask questions about her official guardian and background; it was just another check and stamp routine that drowned them in an endless drove of paperwork and filing. Scan over the papers with tired eyes, sign a worn signature on a black line, and pass it on to be someone else's problem. Though initially, the other students were not as accepting.

Xion heard the whispers. Every moment her back was turned, she accidentally raised a torrent of muted, feverous discussion. They would eye her with curiosity when it was possible their eyes could meet and stare at her with a certain superiority and disgust when they couldn't.

She was new. She was strange. She was different.

But like all things lose their curiosity and newness over time, in a few days she was just another student getting pushed and pulled with the sluggish tides of all the others. They even went as far as to forget her, as if they were making up for their past hostility, placing her in the back of their minds just as she was placed in the back of the classrooms. It almost scared her more that she went ignored rather than as the topic of gossip. Being forgotten was a scary thing, and she didn't like it.

"You, in the back..." The teacher paused for a moment to flip through her grade book. Her scanning eyes found the seating chart she had been searching for. "Xion. What is derivative of f in respect to time, t?"

"T squared plus five," she rattled off without a hint of hesitation. Math had always come easy to her. Or at least, she had assumed it had. At first she was placed in Algebra One, but the discovery of her more extensive knowledge got her shipped off to Calculus. She did ok in all subjects, math over the others- well, with the very blatant exception of history. They made an excuse for her, especially after the teacher had asked her who the first mayor of Twilight Town was and she responded with "This is Twilight Town, right?" Her special case only muffled the other students' snickers.

"Very good." The teacher turned to scrawl a few equations on the whiteboard with squeaky markers.

"Wow Xion, for someone who lost their memory, you're sure great at math!" Olette whispered in amazement when as their teacher's back was turned. Xion shrugged and smiled modestly.

xxx

"Heeey, Xion!" Pence stumbled over nothing and was nearly swept away by the amassing mob of students, narrowly dodging in time. Xion could only peer worryingly at him around the countless shoulders and backpacks bobbing about. Finally catching up with her, he paused to take a few shaky breaths before matching his stride to hers.

"So, how've all your classes been, Xion?" Pence's cheerful tone told of how his classes had gone that day.

"Good." She punctuated the short answer with a somewhat forced smile. School was ok, but she still wasn't too used to it.

"That's great!" His bubbly attitude was contagious and refreshing, especially in comparison to dry lectures and Hayner's natural attitude. She couldn't help but allow a real smile to surface. For a moment, it faltered noticeably into a softly shocked "o" shape.

"Something wrong?" Pence's concerned voice reached her ears.

"N-no..." Blinking away the strange sensation, she adopted the fake smile again. "It's nothing."

"I don't think it's nothing." Olette intoned each word slowly as if she was coming to a conclusion as she spoke.

"Where did you come from?" Xion yelped in surprise, nearly jumping back at Olette's sudden appearance and close proximity.

"Well, that class right there," she indicated to a now closed door on their left, "but that's aside the point. What if, I don't know, you might be remembering something?"

"Yeah, it could be some kind of sixth sense thing or something!" Pence waved his arms in exaggeration of his strange notion.

"That's just your weirdness talking, Pence." Hayner drifted over with hands shoved in his pockets and backpack slung over one shoulder.

"It could be! There are plenty of studies out there to prove-"

"Yeah, yeah, so what's the deal here?" Hayner rolled his eyes. Xion sighed.

"I honestly don't know. It was kinda like, I don't know, this weird... flutter or flicker at the back of my mind... like a- a scent almost." She tried to emphasize her point with her hands, but no motions for the strange feeling came to mind. "You guys probably think I'm just crazy, huh?"

"Well-"

Pence cut Hayner off without breaking the flow of the conversation. "Of course not! I mean, it's not like we haven't dealt with this kind of thing before, you guys. I mean, look at all the stuff that happened with Kairi, and Sora."

"So...ra?" Xion tried the word out as if she was tasting it. If a name could taste like anything, it sure tasted familiar.

"Yeah, you see, there was this whole deal with the worlds being in trouble, and Sora had to-"

"Pence! We weren't supposed to tell!" Olette nearly yelled in exasperation, and Pence smacked himself in the forehead.

"Oh yeah! Well, it's a secret," he whispered ("Not anymore!" Olette murmured in irritation), "but this girl Kairi came about a year back and all this weird stuff happened. So we're kinda used to it."

"O-ok..." She simply nodded. They walked through the dull halls slowly, Olette and Hayner chatting- or rather arguing- about something or other while Xion's mind was elsewhere.

xxx

"Xion!" Someone called her from behind, a ways down the smooth tramway she had been wandering along on her way to Olette's house. For a moment, she almost turned around and called back, but the call back caught in her throat when she realized she didn't recognize the voice. Or maybe she did, but it was so brief and quick she couldn't be sure.

Just barely having finished her one hundred eighty degree spin on her heels, Xion slammed into someone. A string of apologies had already formed in her mouth, ready to spill out. That is, until whoever it was wrapped his or her- wait, his, definitely his- arms around her tightly in a close embrace, bordering on bone-crushing but held back by restraint.

"Xion, you're here..." He murmured into the top of her head, mostly to himself. Xion's arms, now sticking out a bit from the force of the embrace, hung in the air awkwardly. She wriggled a bit in his firm grasp to test if she would be escaping anytime soon- but the experiment verified there would likely be no escape. Her face was smushed against his chest and her voice rendered useless, so she loosened her tension a notch with the thought that struggling would only make things worse. He continued to speak gently to both her and himself, and she thought she felt a drop of wetness touch her head.

"Mmmff..." Giving up on the idea that he would let go soon, she attempted to talk. "Hhmmff!"

"Hm? Oh, sorry-" He de-latched himself from her, pulling her away but keeping his hands on her shoulders. "Better?"

She could hear the smirk in the voice before she saw the real thing. It was the second thing she noticed, right after his eyes. They watched her expectantly, waiting for her to do something as if on cue. She just stared at them and then averted her gaze away and back, not sure what to say, or really, what she was supposed to say.

"H-hi?" she spluttered quietly, leaning away. A dull curtain fell over his eyes, but the smirk didn't go away.

"Guess you're not too excited to see me, heh."

He straightened up and was suddenly distanced from her. She suddenly became aware of the cool fall breeze sweeping over the common and into the alleys.

"You're mad at me, aren't you?" He stared down and away from her. "I'm... sorry."

"I- well-" How could she phrase it in the nicest way possible? "Have we- met?"

He whipped around with his gaze boring into her, his blood-red hair jerking with the sudden movement. Xion was forced to look at them, and what she glimpsed ripped her apart inside.

"You're- not serious, right? You're just joking... right? After all, if you learned at all, you learned from the best." He forced a smirk, more like a half-grin, fake. It faded. "But you are serious, aren't you."

He turned away from her pained expression again to hide his own. "I..."

The way he stood threatened for him to walk away at any moment. But he stayed, not rooted to the spot, just standing there. Xion somehow found the courage to comfort him; maybe it was what she couldn't see on his face that drove her to.

"B-but maybe I have- have met you before," she stuttered as optimistically as possible. A hesitant hand reached out, backing away before it brushed his sleeve. As if sensing the possibility of contact, he shifted slightly. Laughter rose like bile in his throat, and he forced it back down. Oh, the irony.

"Heh. Maybe." He donned his best façade and whirled around to face her. "See you later, then. Oh, and I'm Axel. Just- don't forget I'm sorry, ok? Get it memorized."

Hesitating for a slight moment, he began walking away before she grabbed his arm.

"Why don't we go..." She strained her mind to think of something on the spot. What seemed to be the best idea ever occurred to her, and she blurted it out in relief and happiness. "Ice cream!"

His arm tensed slightly under her tough grip, but he chuckled instead, the tiniest bit of bitter lingering in his laugh.

"What about it?"

"W-we should go have ice cream, and you can tell me about how you know me," she proffered, realizing a moment after her sentence how ridiculous it had sounded. He chuckled genuinely this time, and she released her hold on his arm.

"On the clocktower, I bet?"

Xion blinked a few times and furrowed her brow. "Yeah, that's sort of what I was thinking; how did you know?"

"Lucky guess."

xxx

"So what do you know about me, Axel?" Xion swung her legs over the edge of the clocktower nervously, partly from the idea that someone knew more about her than she did and partly from hanging over empty air with a rock hard bottom.

"Oh, just some things. Point is, we're friends." He grinned a little when he saw frustration etch itself into her features at his vague answer. Handing her an ice cream, he took a large bite out of his own.

"...Anything else?" she questioned with a nonchalant raise of her eyebrows and purse of her lips, trying to press more answers out of him.

"Look, Xi-" He caught himself at the end of the nickname, "-on, what if me telling you all this just makes things worse? If I can tell you one thing, it's that you haven't had the best... experience with memories. It could hurt you, or something."

What was he supposed to say, hey, I'm your best friend who died a little while back, and oh, you're a Replica who also died? Not going to work.

"You know amnesiacs- well actually, you wouldn't since you are one, haha..." He rubbed the back of his head at the accidental joke, managing a small giggle from Xion.

"How about this." Axel clapped his hands together and pulled his hands apart until only the tips of his fingers were touching. "We'll start small, working our way up bit by bit."

She nodded eagerly, not saying anything in silent anticipation. She was surprised at herself for being so automatically trusting.

"Ok then..." His mind continued to come back to the idea he didn't really want to start with. An internal sigh almost escaped his mouth, his voice instead coming out as weary. "Roxas. Do you remember him?"

"Roxas... I think so..." She leaned her elbows on her knees and cupped her chin in her hand as she drummed her fingers on her cheek.

First word you ever said, he thought to himself with a mental smirk.

Her head jerked up and snapped in his direction. "I do, he-"

Groaning, she dug her nails into her scalp as her face contorted painfully. Her breathing became labored, and her head fell back onto her shoulders as her body swung forward toward the nausea-inducing fall beneath her feet.


Lol random calculus insert there. Calculus is not that fun. :C

Your support is much appreciated. ^^ Writing a full romance fic is hard. OTL