This shouldn't have taken so long. Bad, bad me. Finals, gah. Let's blame the finals.

Disclaimer: Should be well known by now…..don't make me repeat myself.

"So….if I wanted to go with you tomorrow because the kids are dying to see me, what do I have to do?" Jenna had woken up from her nap, and she and Axel were lying together on the couch, their feet crossed together. Axel's arms crossed her stomach, holding her gently. Her head was under his chin.

"Well, you'd have to get up early with me, and be at the school by quarter of eight. The kids come at eight on the dot."

"Ugh. Well…I could suck it up and take it like a man if I have to."

"Would you? They'd love it if you could come. And Aerith and I could use a third pair of hands."

"Sure. I'll go." Jenna flipped over and gave him a tight hug. The bubbling heat coursed through his whole body. Axel savored the feeling, now that he finally had a name for it: love. What confused him now was why and how he was able to feel it. He's a Nobody. He wasn't supposed to have any emotions or feelings at all. And last time he checked, love was an emotion.

He wondered if it had anything to do with the fact that he was no longer in The World That Never Was. Maybe now the spell the darkness had on him was starting to dwindle.

"Oh, thank you so much! The kids are going to be ecstatic that you're going to be there to play with them."

"Wait….play?"

"Well, yes. They have free play for the first hour when they get there to loosen up some and get used to the fact that school's starting, then there's recess, and we let them play until their parents pick them up at the end of the day around two. And we always use games in the classroom during lessons; they seem to learn better that way when something fun's involved."

"I've….never played….before…" he said rather sheepishly.

"They'll show you how. Don't worry about that."

"They won't laugh at me?"

"Why would kids laugh at you? Aerith and I play with them all the time. They change their games almost daily, so we have to be taught several times over again how a certain game works."

"Oh."

"There. There's nothing to worry about."

"I'll take your word for it, then." He tightened his hug, holding her. He liked how she felt in his arms. She wasn't too skinny, but she wasn't too fat either. She had teased him a couple times before, saying he was skinnier than her, and would often pinch his "child-bearing" hips.

"Ax….."

"Yeah?"

"Can you let me go?" She was trying to lift his arms off of her and sit up.

"I'm sorry." He quickly let her go and recoiled, drawing back as if she were about to strike. "I guess I got a little too cuddly, huh?"

She didn't answer him as she stood up and left the room, heading downstairs to see if her mother needed help with anything.

'Smooth', he scolded himself. 'You finally get close enough, and then you blow it out of the water. She finally decides to snuggle up to you, and you take it too far. Very, very smooth, Axel.'

He growled a little as he fell backwards onto the couch. He had to remind himself he wasn't in the Castle anymore; get too angry and the couch -or the whole house- would go up in flames. But he wasn't angry at her; he was angry at himself. He wanted to tell her what seemed to be going on inside him, wanted to let her know how he "felt". He knew he was afraid, in a way. He didn't want to scare her. For all he knew, she could throw him out if she decided he was a sort of threat. Or if she thought he was a creep.

At the same time, though, he wondered if she would know why he seemed to feel the way he did. She seemed to know a lot about who he was; perhaps she'd know why all of this was going on.

Again his palm travelled to his chest. He still felt nothing, not even a flutter, below the skin. He heaved a sigh.

'What the hell……' he wondered. 'Why is this happening to me?'

"You want me to do what now?" Mrs. Casara asked Axel a few moments later. Jenna had left to go pick up Joel from his friend's house before it got too dark.

"You're a nurse….you'd be able to tell if I had a heart, right?"

"Of course…come here, dear."

He moved just a bit closer and found two fingers pressing into the side of his neck. They stayed there for a few minutes, and then pulled away. "Nothing," she noted. She brought her ear to his chest to try and listen for any sign of a heartbeat. "Nothing," she said again. She patted his shoulder. "Sorry, dear."

"It's all right." Axel sighed again.

"Why did you ask me to do that? You know you're a Nobody. Nothing's changed since you got here."

"You're wrong. Something has changed." He leaned a little on the countertop. "When I got here….when I first met your daughter….I felt nothing. But when she cared for me when I was freezing like I was, I started…feeling…"

"How so?"

"Well, I've never been cared for before. I've never had someone there to make sure I was okay. But then I was Abandoned, and when Jenna took me in I felt loved. And now it's like I can love. But I'm not supposed to feel. I don't have a heart. I was wondering if maybe the darkness was losing its grip on me."

"Perhaps….or maybe it's like this." She took a piece of paper and drew two figures on it. She drew a heart on one of them. "Let's pretend the one with the heart is Jenna, and the one without one is you. You've been living in darkness for so long you've forgotten how to feel. Your heart is a void that longs to be filled. The only thing you know about emotions is that you don't have them."

Axel nodded to show he understood her thus far.

"Now, throw Jenna into the scene. She has a heart; emotions, feelings. You have contact with her, and she expresses these emotions to you. What happens is that while you yourself can't feel the same way back, some secret part of you remembers what it feels like to do so. That part of you wants to feel the same way about her, and this is what happens." She started to draw a heart inside of his figure, making a dotted outline. "Those memories are filling that void. That's why you feel like you can love her; you're remembering what it used to be like."

"Do you think then…I could get a heart that way?"

Mrs. Casara shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine, dear." She gently patted his hair before leaving the room.

Jenna seemed to have recovered from her "Axel got too snuggly with me" episode and was at least talking to him again later that afternoon, even though she kept herself at a distance from him. She did that later that night after dinner when they were watching a movie, when she chose not to join Axel and Joel on the couch.

Axel said nothing, deciding maybe it was best if they were apart for just a while. That did nothing to stop the slow pang of guilt that throbbed inside.

"Axel, are you sad?" Joel asked him, peeking at the saddened expression on the Nobody's face.

"Me..? No." 'Yes….' He thought.

"You look sad, Axel. What's the matter?"

Jenna herself turned her attention to the matter at hand. Axel saw she was looking right at him and felt the tips of his ears redden. "It's nothing. I'm just….homesick, that's all."

'You're a horrible liar' Jenna thought. 'Something else is up.'

Axel fell silent again, choosing to look at his lap instead of the television screen. Jenna stood up from the chair she was sitting in and slid next to him on the couch, while Joel jumped up and stole her seat.

"This isn't about what happened earlier, is it?" she asked him gently. When he nodded yes, she sighed. "Look…I didn't mean to react like that. I just wasn't expecting that from you, being heartless and all."

"I may not have a heart," he told her, "but I remember what it feels like to have one."

It was her turn to look down at her lap. "Axel…I'm sorry. Will you still go with me tomorrow to see the kids?"

He smiled. "Of course. We already went over that." He pondered for just a moment. "Now….how early do I have to get up…?"

It was her turn to grin. "You'll see tomorrow," she told him.

Axel did not like how that sounded. He refused to put his arm around her shoulder for the rest of the night.

Wowee that was a short one. I was going to have them go to the school in this chapter, but I changed my mind since I want that to be its own chapter/experience thing. And we'll finally see Aerith!

R&Rs are greatly appreciated!